![]() In the eyes of many, the introduction of money into baseball turned it into a shady pastime, rife with cheating, gambling, and hooliganism. It just so happened that in 1922, both baseball’s amateur ideal and the way of life it represented were under attack.ĭriven by the efforts of businessmen who spotted baseball’s potential for mass entertainment, the sport was rapidly becoming more commercial and professional. As historian Harold Seymour wrote, they “were admirably suited to a young, essentially rural America”-they encapsulated the country’s pastoral, democratic genius. It was baseball.”) and believed that its amateur roots were more than fundamental to it. Their generation was obsessed with the sport (one obituary to Justice William Day simply read: “Justice Day had one hobby. The Justices that decided Federal Baseball were all born between 18. Above all, baseball was a local, physical activity, not a spectator sport. Bases were made of rocks, bats from sticks, and balls from materials as diverse as thread, buckshot, or shoe soles. Any makeshift surface-an empty lot, an alleyway-could serve as a field. Rules varied, sometimes dramatically, from town to town. At that time, most Americans knew baseball as an amateur game, unrecognizable from the standardized, professionalized sport it later became. These trends date all the way back to baseball’s early years, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Seen through a different lens, though, it appears to be the logical conclusion of several cultural trends that had been brewing for decades. Baseball seemed to clearly be interstate commerce as the plaintiffs had argued, “the continuous interstate activity of each is essential to all the others.” Beyond that, the very next term, the Court declared that traveling vaudeville shows, which followed a similar business model, were a form of interstate commerce.įrom a strictly legal standpoint, Federal Baseball makes little sense. The Court, however, ruled that baseball was exempt from antitrust law because it was not “interstate commerce.” Successive generations of legal experts have puzzled over this decision. ![]() Baltimore, that last club standing, sued.Īt first glance, Federal Baseball seemed like a straightforward case-the National League itself did not deny that its behavior was monopolistic. In retaliation, National League owners bought and shut down every rival team, save for one. Federal League clubs aggressively poached National League players, enticing them to jump ship with larger contracts and friendlier labor policies. A few years earlier, a group of entrepreneurs had set up the Federal League to compete with the National League, then the sport’s preeminent institution (and one of MLB’s constituent parts). Federal Baseball: The Beginning of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemptionīaseball’s antitrust exemption began with a 1922 Supreme Court case, Federal Baseball v. To challenge it was to oppose the sport, and, by extension, the country itself-and very few dared to go that far. The exemption became an existential matter. They portrayed baseball as essential to America, and the exemption as essential to baseball. The major leagues, conscious that the exemption stood on shaky legal grounds, leveraged their cultural influence to sway judges and politicians alike in their favor. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, for one, expressed his bemusement at the exemption’s ability to “survive indefinitely even when surrounded by a sea of contrary law.”Ĭombining the historical and legal perspectives gives us a novel picture of how and why MLB’s legal monopoly came to be. Legal scholars approach its relevant cases abstractly, logically, and out of context, and find themselves similarly confused. ![]() Sports historians, whose expertise lies in on-field rather than courtroom drama, are often baffled by it. The exemption’s place at the intersection of two specialized fields, sports history and antitrust law, has long hampered efforts to understand it. īaseball’s antitrust exemption-which recently became the latest flashpoint in America’s culture wars-has long proven a headache for scholars who seek to explain its existence. You can read all of the pieces in the series here. To try to address this deficiency, we decided to launch a Sunday column on ProMarket focusing on the historical dimension of economic ideas. ![]() Why has a professional sports league enjoyed a legal monopoly for nearly a century?Įditor’s note: The current debate in economics seems to lack a historical perspective. ![]() Baseball’s antitrust exemption, currently the subject of fierce political backlash, has long been a historical curiosity. ![]()
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