AntiTrust Base Ball League

[Mike Donlin]

Our story begins in 1914 with the Federal League, the short-lived attempt to start a third professional baseball league. After a lackluster 1915 season, the owners of the American and National Leagues bought out most of the owners of the Federal League teams, with the exception of the Baltimore Terrapins. Instead of selling out, the owner of the Terrapins sued the National and American Leagues. Specifically, the prosecution argued that the American and National Leagues prevented the Federal League teams from signing talented players, and, thus, maintained an effective monopoly over professional baseball, thereby violating the Sherman Antitrust Act.


At the lower court level, the defendants were found guilty, and forced to pay damages of $240,000. In 1922, however, in Federal Baseball Club v. National League (259 U.S. 200), the Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision and bizarrely ruled that baseball games were “intrastate events,” not interstate commerce, and thus exempt from the provisions of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.


The Court’s ruling also indirectly legitimated the controversial reserve clause, inserted in every player’s contract, which stated that upon the contract's expiration, the rights to the player were retained by the team that had signed him. Players were thus subject to a form of never-ending indentured servitude, their salaries kept artificially low by not being able to sell their labor to the highest bidder.

Only over half a century later would players earn their freedom, as it were, and even then baseball remained exempt from antitrust provisions.


That’s what happened in the real world.


Stay tuned for what happens in the Anti-Trust Base Ball League!

[Dark Horse]

Can't wait to see where you go with this.