SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.
The Federal Base Ball Club of Baltimore, Incorporated, Plaintiff in Error vs. The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, National Exhibition Company, The Brooklyn Ball Club et al.
EXEMPTING BASEBALL FROM ANTI-TRUST LAWS
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.
The Federal Base Ball Club of Baltimore, Incorporated, Plaintiff in Error vs. The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, National Exhibition Company, The Brooklyn Ball Club et al.
A rare “slip opinion” on the case of the Base Ball Club of Baltimore vs. The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs.
After the Federal League began competing with the established major league clubs in both the American and National leagues, it lost all of its clubs with the single exception of Baltimore. “The Baltimore club brought suit, alleging that that major leagues conspired to monopolize the baseball business by buying up some of the clubs in the Federal League and by various means inducing the others to leave. The whole structure of rules and regulations that bound together the clubs in organized baseball was cited as an unreasonable restraint of trade. It was contended that players in organized baseball were reluctant to accept offers from the Federal League clubs because of coercive regulations that threatened black-listing and banishment from the organized segment of baseball. Its inability to procure trained players, plus the loss of member clubs that provided playing opposition, spelled destruction for the Federal League” (Robinson).
Indeed, the Court ruled that professional baseball was exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act because “the business is giving exhibitions of base ball which are purely states affairs” and that travel accross state lines to play is incendental and doesn’t constitute commerce.
The final official publication appeared in Volume 29 of the United States Reports in 1923, which varies only with the addition of a citation and some corrected punctuation.
Rare: OCLC locates a single copy at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Robinson, W.C., “Professional Sports and the Antitrust Laws” in The Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 2, (September, 1957), pp.133-141.
