The Baseball Trust: A History of Baseball's Antitrust Exemption

In this important study, Banner (law, Univ. of California, Los Angeles) provides extensive treatment of organized baseball's battle with antitrust regulations. He goes back to 1879—before federal antitrust laws were in place—when baseball's reserve clause was devised, contractually binding a player to a team for the whole of his career. Banner refutes the long-standing analysis that competitive balance and the safeguarding of capital investments required the reserve clause, but acknowledges that many relatively well-paid players felt ambivalent about the clause. He counters stereotypical notions regarding baseball and antitrust law, including the belief that a 1922 Supreme Court ruling asserted that Congress determined "to exempt baseball from the antitrust laws." Nevertheless, that 1922 ruling was predicated on an analysis of interstate commerce that soon dissipated. Decades of challenges to the reserve clause followed, culminating in the agreement to allow free agency. As of today, baseball's antitrust exemption remains battered but intact.