Long before the scandal broke, many of baseball's owners had nursed longstanding grievances with the way the game was then governed by the National Commission. The scandal and the damage it caused to the game's reputation gave owners the resolve to make major changes to the governance of the sport. The owners' original plan was to appoint the widely respected federal judge and noted baseball fan Kenesaw Mountain Landis to head a reformed three-member National Commission. However, Landis made it clear to the owners that he would only accept an appointment as the game's "sole" Commissioner, and even then only on the condition that he be granted essentially unchecked power over the sport. The owners, desperate to clean up the game's image, agreed to his terms, and vested him with virtually unlimited authority over every person in both the major and minor leagues. Upon taking office prior to the 1921 Major League Baseball season, one of Landis' first acts as Commissioner was to use his new powers to place the eight accused players on an "ineligible list", a decision that effectively left them suspended indefinitely from all of "organized" professional baseball (although not from semi-pro barnstorming teams).