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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 15:29, 27 June 2011 [1].

Kenesaw Mountain Landis

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Kenesaw Mountain Landis (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Wehwalt (talk) 16:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because... I think it meets the criteria. Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Described as America's only successful dictator. He ruled over baseball for a quarter century with an iron hand, and before that was a Federal judge highly popular with the public. His taking the job as commissioner would be like if Justice Scalia took the job today, that's the only way to describe it. Thanks to the Baseball Hall of Fame Library for some fine sources, and for two photographs, though, and I'm going to say it guys, at $30 a pop, at least wipe the dirt off before you scan it! And thanks to our onsite photoshop experts for doing for free what the Hall of Fame failed to do for pay.Wehwalt (talk) 16:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:09, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Why include a retrieval date for ref 26 and not 46?
  • Be consistent in whether titles of newspaper/magazine/journal articles are in quotation marks or not
  • ref 17: "pp.", not "p."
  • ref 139: why no italics on title here?
  • Be consistent in how editions are notated
  • ref 149: are there pages missing, or should the comma be a period?
  • Link ISBNs? Also, don't they use the other kind of short horizontal line?
  • McFarland & Co. or McFarlane & Co., Inc.? Nikkimaria (talk) 17:09, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Those things are done. Thank you as always for your nitpicky reviews.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:50, 16 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Image review issues:

No, sorry, autocomplete hit that field and I did not notice.
Yes, it is a screenshot of a microfilmed newspaper containing the image, cropped.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:51, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Judge Landis as fan.png: Need to verify, any page number from where it was scanned from The Milwaukee Journal, or is there a source that states this was published in that newspaper?
It is on page 14, the link is here.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:03, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Cottrell's. Later, I got Lincoln Landis's book and found it is was there.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:51, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:Eight men banned.png: Need to verify, this is said to be "reproduced from [Saying It's So]". The book (as much as I can tell from the captions of the 8 pages of photographs after p. 118 through Google Book)[2] does not seem to have this. Is this obtained from paperofrecord.com or the book?
I'm sorry, I cited to the wrong book. It is corrected now at the image description page, and if look below the image, you will see the source mentions 1920 publication.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:31, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I've added a link and a page number to the image description, sorry about that.
  • File:Landis is hired.jpg: Is there a citation link (or ID or instructions to search their archives) to paperofrecord.com that can be used?
No. You search from that page with the list of newspapers, and they will not become links unless you are a logged in subscriber.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:57, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All the above (some are just trivial) should be easy to resolve. Jappalang (talk) 07:53, 17 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I have updated some things. Every image is now okay; they are verifiably in the public domain. Great job in finding all these images. Jappalang (talk) 09:23, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the check and the work. Landis is situated perfectly for images, much of the key parts of his career were pre-1923 and Library of Congress takes care of the rest. I had images in reserve (a poor shot of Landis showing his throwing technique in Toronto in 1937, for example, but a poor photocopy).--Wehwalt (talk) 09:34, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments This is a very good, very informative article, but I think there are a few issues that should be addressed. Here are the ones that jumped out me.
  • The statement "Others blame Landis for not doing more to bring about the racial integration of baseball" is too weak given what is stated in the body of the article, as well as what I have read elsewhere. Many historians still blame Landis for actively delaying the integration of baseball. I would suggest "Others blame Landis for delaying the racial integration of baseball".
  • In footnote 103, it is "Rob Neyer" not "Ron Neyer". You might want to say "Rob Neyer" rather than just "Neyer" in the text as well.
  • In the section that talks about the Black Sox scandal you might want to mention that the 1919 WS scandal was the culmination of several years of increasing corruption in baseball with players like Hal Chase and Heine Zimmerman routinely involved throwing games in the period of 1917-1920, in part because of conflicts over money between players and owners. A good source on this is The Bill James Historical Baseball Almanac (2001). See p. 116. I am sure Eight Men Out (the book) talks about this as well thought it has been some years since I read it.
  • James says (pp. 136-138) that during the investigations in the 1920s at least 38 players were investigated for involvement with gambling, 18 were officially banned, and another 4 retired players were not formerly banned but were effectively blacklisted from any further involvement with organized baseball. I would think as a minimum the article should mention that 10 players besides the 8 White Sox were officially banned.

That is it for the moment, but I may have other comments when I have studied the article further. Rusty Cashman (talk) 20:28, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Those things are taken care of.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:46, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the praise and the review, and the support.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:18, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I participated in the peer review for this article and, other than the odd grammar tweaks, which I've since made, all my concerns were addressed there. Great article -- good luck! --Coemgenus (talk) 13:09, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks for the support, the reviews, and the tweaks which I see you're still doing.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:14, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I made a lot of comments at the peer review, which were acted on satisfactorily. I have also observed the additional matters dealt with in this FAC review. This will make a fine featured article; I'd particularly like to echo Jappalang's comment on the variety and quality of the images. Brianboulton (talk) 20:19, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you as well. I went to some effort on the images, glad they are liked.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:21, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support – As a European layman I didn't suppose an article on an American lawyer and baseball fancier would be interesting, but I was wrong. A most enlivening article, and – as we now expect from this nominator – fully compliant with FA criteria. Two comments so minor as to be barely distinguishable with the naked eye: (i) I hesitate to correct a spelling in a quotation, but I imagine "a tough judge and a man sympthetic with his viewpoint in that important court" should be "…sympathetic…" and (ii) as an Englishman I should not write "friends's estates", but don't feel qualified to change it lest it be good US usage. – Tim riley (talk) 22:38, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the support, I have checked and it was my typo, not the source's. I'll change the other one around to estates of friends.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:54, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Source checking – Article needs some spot-checking, so I'll take that on for a change. Most of the references are to books, but I was able to check all of the sources avaliable online and the Robert Creamer book, which I have. That covers a grand total of 8 citations (out of 166), but it's better than nothing and the best I can do. Only found a few minor things in my checks.

  • One prose-related comment from Baseball color line, which was part of where I checked: in "whom it suggests was a Southerner", I believe the second word should be "he", since the book does have a specific author, who apparently wrote the entire thing (or at least the relevant section).
  • In the first quote from that book, the first word ("made") doesn't appear in the quote itself. It could be moved outside the quote, or perhaps put in brackets.
  • From Ruth-Meusel barnstorming incident (dash for the section heading?): "It had been common for the two World Series teams to proceed to barnstorm against each other" The Creamer book is unclear on whether they were the actual teams, or just had players from the World Series teams. It just says "players from World Series teams", and later "touring players"; it doesn't say the teams themselves were responsible for the barnstorming, and it says the "teams" were frequently missing many of their players.

Source reliablilty looks fine throughout, as does the formatting. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 01:58, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have made those changes. I have stricken the reason for the barnstorming ban, as I am finding claims it was because of a Cuban barnstorming tour when the "Athletics" were beaten by local (black) teams, I don't want to get into it as the reasons for it are peripheral to Landis's story.--Wehwalt (talk) 02:15, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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