Kenesaw Mountain Landis, born in Millville, Ohio, in 1866, spent much of his youth in Indiana after his family moved to Delphi and then to Logansport. His unusual name was a spelling variation on the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, where his father had been wounded in 1864 during the American Civil War. At age 22, he went to law school and, after graduating, practiced law in several Indiana cities, including Marion, where he worked for about two years in the late 1800s from an office at the northwest corner of Sixth and Washington streets, across from the Carnegie Building of the Marion Public Library, before later practicing in Chicago. First a lawyer and then a federal district judge, he was named federal judge for the Northern District of Illinois in 1905 and became a high-profile member of the federal judiciary. He is best remembered as the first Commissioner of Major League Baseball, a position he took in 1920 after the American and National league owners had been embarrassed by the 1919 Black Sox scandal and other alleged instances of players throwing games. Given full power to act in the sport's best interest, he used that authority extensively over the next quarter-century and was widely praised for restoring baseball to respectability. Shortly after his death in 1944, he was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame by a special vote.