Happy Chandler: Jackie Robinson's Commissioner Who Sent Tanks to Sturgis

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Albert Benjamin "Happy" Chandler was born in rural Kentucky in 1898, and by age three his mother had left the family. By eight he was running paper routes and odd jobs, and he later paid for law school by coaching high school sports. In 1921 he scouted Harvard's practices for a former teammate coaching tiny Centre College, which then beat Harvard 6 to 0. Elected lieutenant governor in 1931, he blocked Governor Ruby Laffoon's sales tax and was stripped of his powers. In 1935, while Laffoon was in Washington, D.C., Chandler used his role as acting governor to call a special session that created a primary election. He won that primary and, at 37, became Kentucky's youngest governor, repealing the sales tax and reorganizing the state government.

After losing a 1938 Senate primary to Majority Leader Alben Barkley, Chandler had himself appointed to the Senate in 1939, where he voted against an anti-lynching bill and against repealing the poll tax. In 1945 he became commissioner of Major League Baseball, moved its headquarters to Cincinnati, and in 1947 approved Jackie Robinson's contract despite owners voting 15 to 1 against integration. Owners removed him in 1951. Elected governor again in 1955, he sent roughly 900 National Guardsmen and M-47 Patton tanks in 1956 to enforce school desegregation in Sturgis and Clay. In 1988, as a University of Kentucky trustee, he used a racial slur in a meeting and declined to offer a real apology.

• His campaign claimed in 1938 that someone from Barkley's side had poisoned his drinking water, and Barkley mocked the charge by pretending to shudder at glasses of water.
• As governor he instituted an income tax, funded free textbooks and paid off the state debt.
• He banned players who jumped to a rival Mexican league for five years, inviting antitrust lawsuits.
• He steered World Series radio and television money into baseball's first player pension fund.
• He backed the threat to suspend St. Louis Cardinals players who talked of striking rather than play against Robinson.