The major league owners meet on November 12, 1920, and make front page news with their decision. Without league presidents, or anyone to record the deliberations of the session, the final agreement differs from the Lasker plan in a very important dimension (emphasis added):

Peace was restored in organized baseball to-day when Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis accepted the offer extended unanimously by the sixteen American and National league clubs to become the head of the board controlling the game.

Judge Landis’s acceptance was with the understanding that he was to keep his place on the bench, where his salary is $7,500, and that he should have “one-man control” of baseball, having no other persons on the board of control with him. His salary as supreme arbiter in all baseball disputes will be $42,500, with an allowance of $10,000 a year for expenses. He agreed to server for a term of seven years.

New York Tribune

There would be no one to balance Landis’s power, no representation that was promised to the minor leagues. Landis was in essence a dictator, a position that would be very popular in the world over the next 20 years.

The betrayal of the minor leagues receives applause from W.J. Macbeth on the sports page:

Big league scouts will tell you that the minor fields are absolutely barren of major league prospects. The playing strength of the lower classes of the minor leagues has deteriorated to an alarming degree. This can be attributed directly to the fact that the major leagues no longer have the privilege of drafting minor league players.

The Class AA and Class A of minor leagues two years ago were able to swing the minor league into an attitude of defiance that resulted in a mutual abrogation of the peace agreement between the major and minor promoters. While draft privileges were denied the majors, the higher minor clubs retained said privilege on leagues of lower classification. The bait to the little fellows was a big scale of draft prices.

But drafting almost immediately became a lost art. The Class AA leagues, which got first crack at the major league discards, were able to present strong line-ups by watching major league requests for waivers. They were the clearing house of the discard of the National and American leagues. The small minor leagues, which had depended upon the sale of players to make both ends meet, soon found a closed market, and the closed market was speedily reflected in the discontent of the low salaried players in the leagues of low classification.

Of course, there’s no mention that maybe there should be no drafts and no waivers, just free agency for players, which would solve most of these problems. It seems fitting that almost 100 years to day later, the major leagues assume full control of the minors, as the National Association goes out of business. The eroding of the minor leagues as independent organizations started well before this, and continued slowly for the next fifty years until the great majority of clubs were simply farm teams for the majors. You do not go to a minor league game to see competitive baseball. You go to see stars of the future working on their game.

One hundred years ago today, the majors the 1920 season ends with baseball transformed into the game we know today. The AL and NL owners became partners with a commissioner serving their needs and driving gambling from the game. Babe Ruth demonstrated the drawing power of power hitting. The death of Ray Chapman brings about the era of the clean ball, already begun in this season with a ban on applying substances to balls (with a few exceptions).

A number of feats made the season memorable. On May first, the Dodgers and the Braves played a twenty six inning 1-1 tie, each starter going the distance. George Sisler batted .407, and three players who hit better than .370 did not win batting titles. Ruth hit his 30th home run of the season on July 19th, breaking the record of 29 home runs in a season he set the previous year. Rogers Hornsby won the average triple crown in the NL, leading the league in BA, OBP, and slugging percentage. Both leagues featured strong, three to five team pennant races. The season is capped by a spectacular game five of the World Series, featuring the first World Series grand slam and an unassisted triple play.

Thank you for reading. I learned much about baseball of the day, the sports writing of the day, and the characters of the game. Hope you enjoyed it also.