Ben Chandler is the CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, a former United States congressman and two-term Kentucky attorney general. Most importantly for purposes of this article, he is the grandson of A.B. “Happy” Chandler, commissioner of baseball from 1946-1951, and an avid baseball fan. Happy Chandler is credited with giving the green light to the then-Brooklyn Dodgers to sign Jackie Robinson, who was promoted to the major-league club in 1947, shattering the color barrier that had blocked Black stars from playing in the majors for more than 60 years.
Tad: Ben, your grandfather is associated with so many things in Kentucky, but we want to focus on his stint as baseball commissioner. A lot of people don’t realize this, but he was only the second one of those, following the long reign of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
Ben: That’s right. Before Landis, the owners ran baseball, but then the 1919 Black Sox Scandal changed that. In order to restore the public’s faith in the game, the owners decided to bring in a commissioner with unimpeachable integrity and picked Landis, a crusty old federal judge, and gave him, at his insistence, extraordinary powers. He exercised those to the fullest and ruled with an iron fist. Crusty? Just look at pictures of him.
My grandfather liked to tell this story about Landis. Once, his wife was walking across a sheet of ice, and Landis called out, “Be careful, honey, or you’ll break your g…d… neck.” While Landis was in charge, none of his austere barriers would be broken, and certainly not the color barrier.
Tad: So, Landis had a long reign and died in office. How did the owners pick Happy?
Ben: It wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t easy. They went through several ballots where he wasn’t even among the top three, but nobody else could get the requisite two-thirds vote. Finally, Happy percolated to the top and won the day despite the feelings of some who thought he was a Kentucky windbag and too often burst into singing “My Old Kentucky Home.” One of the reasons he was favored was because he was a politician, and the owners needed someone to fight off a contingent of federal legislators who thought major league baseball should be shut down during World War II. The owners figured, who best to fight the politicians than one of their own.
Tad: Chandler’s only role model for the job was Landis, who served for almost 25 years. What do you think the owners were looking for in the new commissioner?
Ben: They weren’t looking for another Landis, that’s for sure. They were looking for someone they could control, and they found out pretty quickly that they had sorely misread their man.
Tad: Jackie Robinson could not play major league baseball without the commissioner’s approval. Did Happy have owner support when he gave that approval?
Ben: Certainly not at first. The owners took a secret straw poll, and 15 out of 16 voted against integration (Branch Rickey [co-owner, president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers] was the one yea vote). At some point, Rickey came to Versailles and visited my grandfather to make sure he had the commissioner’s support. He was assured that he did. That helped turn the tide, and the record shows Happy lived up to his word. After the infamous race-baiting episode in Philadelphia led by manager Ben Chapman, Happy threatened him and Phillies’ players with suspensions. When the St. Louis Cardinals threatened to boycott a game against the Dodgers, he also threatened them with similar punishment. Even before that, when Robinson visited Louisville as a Montreal Royal [a Dodgers minor-league farm team at the time] to play a game against the Colonels, my grandfather warned the Kentucky team against any sort of racial shenanigans. That’s all in the history books, but he had another way of enforcing good conduct. Happy’s driver was [John] “Frenchy” DeMoisey, former All-American basketball player who played [at the University of Kentucky] for Adolph Rupp (who credited DeMoisey as the first to develop the one-hand overhead pivot shot). Get out of line and Frenchy might pay you a visit like the one he paid to Ben Chapman. I don’t know how persuasive Frenchy’s verbal skills were, but his 6-foot, 4-inch, 350-pound frame did all the talking that was required.1
Tad: Happy didn’t get much credit in the movie 42 [a 2013 biopic starring the late Chadwick Boseman as Robinson]. Why do you think that is?
Ben: Hollywood. No doubt the scriptwriters felt that having another “good guy” would detract from the sainted Harrison Ford character. The 42 movie has Branch Rickey uttering a line similar to this: “I figured that someday I’d have to meet my maker, and he’d ask me why I didn’t let that Robinson play. I was afraid that if I told him it was because he was Black, that wouldn’t have been sufficient.” That was my grandfather’s line, uttered during his Baseball Hall of Fame induction speech in 1982. The movie also had my grandfather getting a manicure. Are you kidding me? Happy Chandler getting a manicure? Never! Hollywood.
Tad: Anything else about his role in breaking the color line, Ben?
Ben: My grandfather was a politician first, and he knew someday he’d again run for elective office in Kentucky. That’s why he didn’t trumpet his role in the “experiment.” But those who were there and who benefited from his support knew the truth. I heard it from their own lips. Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe each told me how grateful they were for my grandfather’s contribution. So did Rachel Robinson [Jackie Robinson’s widow]. In fact, to pay homage to him, she made a point of traveling all the way to Versailles to celebrate the new Jackie Robinson postage stamp. And I heard it directly from her.2
Tad: OK, if Happy had played a bigger role in the movie, what actor would you pick to play him?
Ben: I can’t think of any one actor. Maybe some combination of Tommy Lee Jones, Charles Durning, Spencer Tracy and Yosemite Sam.
Tad: Ben, Happy Chandler was known as the “players’ commissioner,” and there isn’t even a close second. Why was that?
Ben: My grandfather saw some of the game’s greatest players out barnstorming to make ends meet after their careers were over. All-timers like Grover Cleveland Alexander and Dazzy Vance. He thought that was a shame and an embarrassment to baseball and decided to do something he had a little experience in—setting up and funding a retirement plan.3 Starting in 1947, he began negotiating World Series radio rights and allocating the proceeds into a players’ pension fund. That grew over the years and helped a lot of players and their families. You’ll recall when I was on your Zoom interview of [former All-Star pitcher] Jim Kaat right after he was elected to the Hall of Fame [in 2021], Kaat expressed his appreciation to my grandfather for setting that up.
Tad: Happy was commissioner starting in 1946 and ending in 1951. Did his term end by his own choosing?
Ben: Yes and no. His contract was set to expire in 1952, and he started early on trying to get an extension. To forestall his politicking, the owners passed a rule that a vote to extend a commissioner’s term could not occur more than 18 months before the term expired. When the vote finally did come, it was 9 for and 7 against, but the owners had changed the requirement from a simple majority to a three-fourths vote after Landis died, so Happy didn’t get the required supermajority. Knowing there would be no extension, my grandfather negotiated an end date of July 31, 1951, and then returned home to practice law.
He was tremendously popular with the fans and with the players, but they had no vote. And despite record attendance figures during his tenure, in the end, it was the owners who voted him out. In the words of Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, he was “the players’ commissioner, the fans’ commissioner, the press and radio commissioner—everybody’s commissioner but the men who pay him.”
Tad: He surely was the most colorful commissioner and easily had the best lines.
Ben: No doubt about it, and some of that freedom he had was negotiated up front. He got the same level of independence as his predecessor. Never again would that happen. And in terms of good lines, his last was a zinger: When told that Ford Frick had been chosen as his successor, he responded, “Well, they have a vacancy, and they decided to keep it.”
Tad: How did Happy’s love of baseball influence you?
Ben: Greatly. I was there when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, I was sitting next to him when Pete Rose barreled Ray Fosse over in the 1970 All-Star Game, and I accompanied him to many a major league game, free of charge on account of his lifetime pass. I can’t tell you how many major leaguers I’ve met. I played, too. And I was pretty good until I ran into something called the curveball.
My grandfather was a little better and played college ball at Transylvania and semi-professional ball, including with future Hall of Famer Earle Combs [of Owsley County], who called Happy “good field, no hit.” As a pitcher, he was 7-1 for a team in Grafton, North Dakota. Later, they named the ballpark there after him.
He also learned another lesson in Grafton. When he slept, he used to hang his pants over a chair with his wallet in the pocket. One night, someone snuck in and lifted his wallet. For the rest of his life, he’d fold his pants up, wallet included, and put them in a drawer before going to sleep. And if anybody’s reading this in Grafton, give me a call if that wallet turns up. You can keep the greenbacks. I’m sure there weren’t many.
Endnotes:
1 Although Chandler was a native of a segregated state and was subject to the ingrained prejudices of his region and period, he was quoted in the Pittsburgh Courier, the influential Black newspaper, as saying, “If it’s discrimination you are afraid of, you have nothing to fear from me.” Moreover, in 1946 he told reporter Wendell Smith, “I think every boy in America who wants to play professional baseball should have the chance, regardless of race, creed or color. I have always said—and I repeat it now—that Negro players are welcome in baseball.” Chandler, who watched numerous games at Kentucky State University in Frankfort, knew Blacks could be great athletes. Imbued with a sense of fairness on the athletic field, Chandler, in a meeting between the two men in 1946, agreed to support Branch Rickey’s experiment. During the major league meetings in Los Angeles in December 1946, Chandler praised Robinson in the Pittsburgh Courier when he said that the former Negro League star was “perhaps the best all-around athlete this country has ever produced.” SABR article written by Bill Marshall. “Baseball’s Most Colorful Commissioner: Happy Chandler,” Society for American Baseball Research (sabr.org)
2 In a 1956 letter to Chandler, Robinson said, “I will never forget your part in the so-called Rickey experiment.” At least one other former player also appreciated Chandler’s contribution to baseball’s integration. Don Newcombe, who joined Robinson on the Dodgers in 1949, later said, “Some of the things he did for Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and [me] when he was commissioner of baseball—those are the kinds of things we never forget.” Newcombe added that Chandler cared for Black players in baseball “when it wasn’t fashionable.” SABR bio written by Terry Bohn. “Happy Chandler,” Society for American Baseball Research (sabr.org)
3 As Governor of Kentucky, Chandler had set up the Kentucky state worker retirement plan, the teachers retirement plan and the state police retirement plan.
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If you are interested in the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), visit sabr.org or contact Chris Betsch at cbbetsch@gmail.com or Tad Myre at tmyre@wyattfirm.com (Louisville Pee Wee Reese chapter), or Lucinda Baker at lucinda.baker@kctcs.edu (Lexington Sweet Lou Johnson chapter).
About the Author
Tad Myre is the immediate past “commissioner” of the Pee Wee Reese Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research, a St. Louis Cardinals fan, and an attorney with Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP.