NSU Horizons Fall 2018

“In 1922, it was not unreasonable for the Supreme Court to say this is not a business, this is the playing of local exhibitions. Today, baseball is a $10- billion industry,” Jarvis said. Despite two legal challenges, the ruling remains intact today — although the court has denied the same exemption to other professional sports leagues. The emergence of player unions and labor negotiations has bargained away its original impact on player salaries and trade mobility. “Major League Baseball looks the way that it does today because at almost every turn, the courts have sided with it,” Jarvis said. “This has allowed baseball to conduct its business as it sees fit. No other industry has enjoyed so much freedom from government regulation.” Almost a century later, the iron fist of Kenesaw Mountain Landis still wields a hammer. League commissioners, the majority of whom have been lawyers, retain absolute authority over baseball based on Landis’ original demand when he accepted the post. To this day, all eight players from that 1919 Chicago team, dubbed the Black Sox, remain banished from the Baseball Hall of Fame. The authority that other baseball commissioners have used over the years comes from what Landis did as commissioner in the White Sox case. “It all goes back to Kenesaw Mountain Landis,” Schiff said. “In society, as in baseball, we are governed by the rule of law. If you go afoul of those rules, there are consequences. That’s the parallel between baseball and law.” ¨ continued from previous page