Last summer, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators sent a letter to Major League Baseball. Baseball had recently contracted about a third of minor league teams. The letter asked MLB to answer questions related to how it runs its minor league system, and how baseball’s antitrust exemption was related to those practices.
The letter was a clear shot across the bow to MLB that Congress might come at them soon. My old friend and occasional podcast guest Rob Hanson and I decided that it was time to read up a little bit on MLB’s strange antitrust exemption. We came across this book by Stuart Banner:
We discussed the book in depth on my podcast this weekend. Both of us couldn’t recommend it enough. Banner strikes the perfect balance between rigorous academic information and readability to non-academics. I’ve never been the biggest fan of reading up on early professional baseball, but Banner does an incredible job telling the story of baseball in the law.
Baseball’s development on the field is inseparable from its development in the courts. Many practices that we take for granted—the draft, restrictions on free agency, the minor leagues—are the direct result of jurisprudence.
I used to think that baseball’s minor league system was unique from other leagues because the sport required more development than other professional sports, but that is clearly wrong. Baseball exercises more control over players (and pays them less) who haven’t yet made the majors because the courts gave MLB a unique exemption to federal antitrust law that the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLS do not have.
Banner documents the progression of three key Supreme Court cases that established baseball’s unique antitrust exemption, culminating in the famous Curt Flood vs. Kuhn, a decision that is rightfully mocked by legal scholars.
A few themes come out of The Baseball Trust. First, because baseball was so popular early in it’s history relative to other professional sports, no one involved wanted to make a policy decision that could endanger it. Judges and politicians made decisions that they knew were wrong because of their love for the game. Second, baseball and politics are deeply intertwined. A lot of the characters on the political and legal side of the book end up working for major league baseball. MLB’s first two commissioners were a judge who ruled in their favor in an early antitrust case and a U.S. senator who killed an antitrust bill.
There’s a lot more in the book. Definitely read it if you have time. If you don’t, I think our podcast does a good job addressing many of the major details. The Baseball Trust is one of my top-5 baseball books ever, up there with Moneyball, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, The Arm and Me and the Spitter.