f/k/a archives . . . real opinions & real haiku

As the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team completes its

first season, Bruce Fein has penned “Baseball’s Privileged Antitrust Exemption”

(Washington Lawyer, Oct. 2005), in which he argues:

“[T]he message to the Supreme Court should be, be done

with this indefensible judicial error perpetrated many long

innings ago.”

  Fein describes the history of the exemption, beginning with the

1922 Federal Base Ball Case, in which the Supreme Court declared

that baseball is not interstate commerce, and thus is not subject to 

the Sherman Act.  [No other professional sport has been granted this

court-made exemption, and Congress has not extended the blanket

exemption to other sports.]  He focuses on the harm that MLB has

done to the baseball fans of Washington, DC, due to the demands of

Peter Angelos, owned of the Baltimore Orioles, and the protection of

the antitrust exemption.  Fein explains further that Angelos:

“eventually lost that battle against the arrival of a new team,

but seemingly has won the war by obtaining monopolistic

control over that team’s television rights. In a largely secret

part of the Washington franchise award, MLB bowed to

Angelos’s ultimatum that the new team be forced to become

a fringe minority partner in a new regional sports network, the

Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN), controlled by him, with

broadcast rights for both the Orioles and the Nationals. Angelos

will own 90 percent of MASN, which might recede to 67 percent

over the next 30 years.  

 

                                                                                           

 

“The 90–10 split favoring Angelos is incontestably a noncompetitive

arrangement. Baltimore’s broadcast rights are decidedly inferior to

Washington’s. Baltimore is the 23rd largest media market, whereas

Washington is the eighth largest. Washington features more than

twice the number of television sets and twice the personal income

of Baltimore.”

 

You can learn more about the Baseball Antitrust Exemption at the  

American Antitrust Institute‘s Research Guide.  It was discussed

last December at the Sports Law Blog, and here by Skip Sauer,

the Sports Economist.  f/k/a discussed the exemption last year

in baseball: intestate commerce (stare decisis on steroids?).

 

We welcomed the new DC Nats, here.  Skip Sauer described

the deal that made it possible here.

 

 

 

lightning…

i lose jeter’s pop-up

in a blaze of static

 

 

 

 

 

 

rainy night

a hole in the radio

where a ballgame should be

 

 

 

 

                                                                 Ed Markwoski

                                                                 “baseballg”  for more real baseball haiku click here

 

“OHolmes”  Lawyer Fein seems to find it a bit ironic that Justice

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who authored the majority opinion in

the Federal Baseball Case had the following to say in his “The

Path of the Law:

“It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law

than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It

is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was

laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply

persists from blind imitation of the past.”