Will there be a 2022 season?

[jacksonianmarch]

It’s collusion if there’s an active CBA. During a lockout, they’re negotiating terms, so it’s not collusion. Also, you need to remember, baseball has an anti-trust agreement too, so that plays into it

[Bellhorn04]

Here's a legal definition of collusion.

...where two persons (or business entities through their officers or other employees) enter into a deceitful agreement, usually secret, to defraud and/or gain an unfair advantage over a third party, competitors, consumers or those with whom they are negotiating.

It seems to me to fit the bill. The owners as individuals have conspired with other owners to "develop a plan they think THEY can live with". They are in essence individual owners colluding to establish a joint bargaining position.

If this happened in any other industry, say if the owners of auto makers got together to set a "contract they could live with" for all plants, it would be collusion. That's why GM, Ford, etc. have to negotiate separately with their workers.

 

It's obviously collusion. I'm just wondering if the anti-trust exemption frees MLB owners from collusion charges when they develop a plan THEY can live with which will apply to all players regardless of team.

 

What jumps out at me is that for there to be collusion there has to be an attempt to deceive and defraud.

 

Such as a secret agreement not to make market value offers to free agents.

 

But the way MLB is structured, the owners have to have a joint bargaining position.

[notin]

What jumps out at me is that for there to be collusion there has to be an attempt to deceive and defraud.

 

Such as a secret agreement not to make market value offers to free agents.

 

But the way MLB is structured, the owners have to have a joint bargaining position.

 

 

It’s also not true to call the owners “individual business owners.” MLB is a singular business, not a group of businesses. The “owners” are really just majority shareholders in different divisions of the same company. They don’t really own anything, and are not free to license their brand individually…

[Elktonnick]

Here's a legal definition of collusion.

...where two persons (or business entities through their officers or other employees) enter into a deceitful agreement, usually secret, to defraud and/or gain an unfair advantage over a third party, competitors, consumers or those with whom they are negotiating.

It seems to me to fit the bill. The owners as individuals have conspired with other owners to "develop a plan they think THEY can live with". They are in essence individual owners colluding to establish a joint bargaining position.

If this happened in any other industry, say if the owners of auto makers got together to set a "contract they could live with" for all plants, it would be collusion. That's why GM, Ford, etc. have to negotiate separately with their workers.

 

It's obviously collusion. I'm just wondering if the anti-trust exemption frees MLB owners from collusion charges when they develop a plan THEY can live with which will apply to all players regardless of team.

 

You answered your own question.

[S5Dewey]

It’s also not true to call the owners “individual business owners.” MLB is a singular business, not a group of businesses. The “owners” are really just majority shareholders in different divisions of the same company. They don’t really own anything, and are not free to license their brand individually…

 

...because of the anti-trust exemption.

 

The question was asked here a couple of weeks ago what the anti-trust act did for owners. I think we're finding out!

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

...because of the anti-trust exemption.

 

The question was asked here a couple of weeks ago what the anti-trust act did for owners. I think we're finding out!

 

I'm not speaking for all the players, but as a dumb jock, myself, when I hear the term anti-trust, it says to me don't-trust the owners or their puppet, Rob Manfred (which literally means steal from men, Fred)...

[notin]

...because of the anti-trust exemption.

 

The question was asked here a couple of weeks ago what the anti-trust act did for owners. I think we're finding out!

 

 

I don’t think it’s the anti trust exemption that denies the owners the ability to market their brands. It’s because the teams and their logos are property of MLB, not Henry, Steinbrenner and company

[Elktonnick]

I'm not speaking for all the players, but as a dumb jock, myself, when I hear the term anti-trust, it says to me don't-trust the owners or their puppet, Rob Manfred (which literally means steal from men, Fred)...

 

You may find the following article in Constitution Daily written November 21, 2021 interesting:

 

On November 9, 1953, the United States Supreme Court upheld a prior, controversial decision that allowed major league baseball to operate outside of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

 

 

 

The one-paragraph, per-curium opinion left in place a decision from 1922 from the Court that found that baseball, at its highest level, was an exhibition and not subject to the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

 

Back in 2008, baseball fan and current Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito explained the unique circumstances in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, that unanimous decision from 1922 that has received some criticism over the years.

 

“Of all the Court’s antitrust cases, the Federal Baseball case may well be the most widely known, but what most people know about the case is not quite accurate,” Alito told an audience at the Supreme Court Historical Society.

 

Alito did acknowledge the legal critics who slammed three Court decisions about the baseball antitrust exemption, and especially the Federal Baseball Club opinion from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “It has been pilloried pretty consistently in the legal literature since at least the 1940s,” Alito said, referring to Holmes’ conclusion that “the business is giving exhibitions of base ball, which are purely state affairs" and outside of interstate commerce regulations.

 

Alito believed the Federal Baseball Club decision fit with the Court’s logic at the time and it wasn’t the product of a baseball-loving court, as some critics have suggested. “In 1922, the Court saw the Commerce Power as a limited power that did not extend to all ‘economic . . . activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.’ This approach forced the Court to draw fine—some would say arbitrary—lines,” Alito concluded.

 

The 1953 case at the Court, Toolson v. New York Yankees, was the first attempt to get the Court to reverse the precedent of Federal Baseball. The one-paragraph opinion said that Congress was the best arena to settle the issue, and not the Supreme Court.

 

“The business has thus been left for thirty years to develop, on the understanding that it was not subject to existing antitrust legislation. The present cases ask us to overrule the prior decision and, with retrospective effect, hold the legislation applicable. We think that if there are evils in this field which now warrant application to it of the antitrust laws it should be by legislation,” the Court concluded.

 

But two Justices attached dissents. Justice Harold Burton said that “Congress, however, has enacted no express exemption of organized baseball from the Sherman Act, and no court has demonstrated the existence of an implied exemption from that Act of any sport that is so highly organized as to amount to an interstate monopoly or which restrains interstate trade or commerce.”

 

The issue came back to the Court a second time for reconsideration in Flood v. Kuhn from 1972, when Curt Flood challenged baseball’s “reserve clause” that kept players from being free agents. In the Flood decision, a 5-3 majority said that baseball was indeed subject to commerce regulations, but the subject’s history compelled Congress – and not the Court – to take action to regulate baseball’s business activities.

 

Justice Harry Blackmun’s colorful majority opinion is still talked about today. Using flowery language, Blackmun finally concluded “that the remedy, if any is indicated, is for congressional, and not judicial, action.” The decision upheld the antitrust exemption.

 

Justice William O. Douglas dissented, even though he signed on to the Toolson decision back in 1953. “While I joined the Court's opinion in Toolson v. New York Yankee, Inc., I have lived to regret it; and I would now correct what I believe to be its fundamental error,” Douglas said.

 

In June 2017, a challenge to the baseball antitrust exemption failed in the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, when a group of former minor-league baseball players sought compensation for what they felt were low wages forced on them by major league player contract standards. The three-person panel cited the three Supreme Court decisions as precedents about the antitrust exemption.

 

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

 

Filed Under: Supreme Court

[Elktonnick]

The owners are well aware that there is growing bipartisan sentiment in congress to tackle baseball's anti trust exemption. Curiously it probably will come more likely from MLB's heavy handed approach to restructure minor league baseball. A suit by former minor league owners is making its way through the courts now. I think it is inevitable that congress will take action if the courts don't. Manfred made no friends in congress over how he treated the minor leagues.

[S5Dewey]

I don’t think it’s the anti trust exemption that denies the owners the ability to market their brands. It’s because the teams and their logos are property of MLB, not Henry, Steinbrenner and company

 

I'm not sure I'm buying what you're selling.

 

For what you're saying to be correct MLB owns the teams and the logos but has given the owners the right to own the contracts of the players and the right to reap the profits of the teams - which are owned by MLB! Now the question becomes, "Who owns MLB?"

 

The answer is, Nobody. Major League Baseball, like the NBA or NFL, isn't as much a thing that can be bought or sold as it is a vehicle to facilitate the increasing of the values of it’s constituent parts: the teams themselves. Major League Baseball is run by the owners of the league's teams (or, more accurately, by the commissioner on behalf of the owners), but there isn't really much there to actually own.*

 

So the owners "own" MLB (as much as anyone can own it) and MLB owns the teams and the logos. At the same time the same owners also own the players contracts and the right to collect the profits from their teams make - although they don't own the team. Nope. Nothing shady about that! LOL.

 

It's apparent that the relationship between owners and MLB is one that has been carefully structured to protect both MLB and the owners wile giving control and profits to the owners and is protected from legal scrutiny by the exemption from the anti-trust act.

 

*William Petrov @ Quora

[Elktonnick]

You may find the following article in Constitution Daily written November 21, 2021 interesting:

 

On November 9, 1953, the United States Supreme Court upheld a prior, controversial decision that allowed major league baseball to operate outside of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

 

 

 

The one-paragraph, per-curium opinion left in place a decision from 1922 from the Court that found that baseball, at its highest level, was an exhibition and not subject to the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

 

Back in 2008, baseball fan and current Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito explained the unique circumstances in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, that unanimous decision from 1922 that has received some criticism over the years.

 

“Of all the Court’s antitrust cases, the Federal Baseball case may well be the most widely known, but what most people know about the case is not quite accurate,” Alito told an audience at the Supreme Court Historical Society.

 

Alito did acknowledge the legal critics who slammed three Court decisions about the baseball antitrust exemption, and especially the Federal Baseball Club opinion from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “It has been pilloried pretty consistently in the legal literature since at least the 1940s,” Alito said, referring to Holmes’ conclusion that “the business is giving exhibitions of base ball, which are purely state affairs" and outside of interstate commerce regulations.

 

Alito believed the Federal Baseball Club decision fit with the Court’s logic at the time and it wasn’t the product of a baseball-loving court, as some critics have suggested. “In 1922, the Court saw the Commerce Power as a limited power that did not extend to all ‘economic . . . activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.’ This approach forced the Court to draw fine—some would say arbitrary—lines,” Alito concluded.

 

The 1953 case at the Court, Toolson v. New York Yankees, was the first attempt to get the Court to reverse the precedent of Federal Baseball. The one-paragraph opinion said that Congress was the best arena to settle the issue, and not the Supreme Court.

 

“The business has thus been left for thirty years to develop, on the understanding that it was not subject to existing antitrust legislation. The present cases ask us to overrule the prior decision and, with retrospective effect, hold the legislation applicable. We think that if there are evils in this field which now warrant application to it of the antitrust laws it should be by legislation,” the Court concluded.

 

But two Justices attached dissents. Justice Harold Burton said that “Congress, however, has enacted no express exemption of organized baseball from the Sherman Act, and no court has demonstrated the existence of an implied exemption from that Act of any sport that is so highly organized as to amount to an interstate monopoly or which restrains interstate trade or commerce.”

 

The issue came back to the Court a second time for reconsideration in Flood v. Kuhn from 1972, when Curt Flood challenged baseball’s “reserve clause” that kept players from being free agents. In the Flood decision, a 5-3 majority said that baseball was indeed subject to commerce regulations, but the subject’s history compelled Congress – and not the Court – to take action to regulate baseball’s business activities.

 

Justice Harry Blackmun’s colorful majority opinion is still talked about today. Using flowery language, Blackmun finally concluded “that the remedy, if any is indicated, is for congressional, and not judicial, action.” The decision upheld the antitrust exemption.

 

Justice William O. Douglas dissented, even though he signed on to the Toolson decision back in 1953. “While I joined the Court's opinion in Toolson v. New York Yankee, Inc., I have lived to regret it; and I would now correct what I believe to be its fundamental error,” Douglas said.

 

In June 2017, a challenge to the baseball antitrust exemption failed in the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, when a group of former minor-league baseball players sought compensation for what they felt were low wages forced on them by major league player contract standards. The three-person panel cited the three Supreme Court decisions as precedents about the antitrust exemption.

 

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

 

Filed Under: Supreme Court

 

I'm not sure I'm buying what you're selling.

 

For what you're saying to be correct MLB owns the teams and the logos but has given the owners the right to own the contracts of the players and the right to reap the profits of the teams - which are owned by MLB! Now the question becomes, "Who owns MLB?"

 

The answer is, Nobody. Major League Baseball, like the NBA or NFL, isn't as much a thing that can be bought or sold as it is a vehicle to facilitate the increasing of the values of it’s constituent parts: the teams themselves. Major League Baseball is run by the owners of the league's teams (or, more accurately, by the commissioner on behalf of the owners), but there isn't really much there to actually own.*

 

So the owners "own" MLB (as much as anyone can own it) and MLB owns the teams and the logos. At the same time the same owners also own the players contracts and the right to collect the profits from their teams make - although they don't own the team. Nope. Nothing shady about that! LOL.

 

It's apparent that the relationship between owners and MLB is one that has been carefully structured to protect both MLB and the owners wile giving control and profits to the owners and is protected from legal scrutiny by the exemption from the anti-trust act.

 

*William Petrov @ Quora

First of all there is nothing shady about Major League Baseballs legal structure whether we like or not. Rightly or wrongly there have been three decisions of the UuS. Supreme Court over the past 100 years which has affirmed that structure. Secondly the MLB.logo and all the team logos are legal trademarks and owned by Major League Baseball and its licensees. Finally the relationship between MLB franchise holders is not that dissimilar between franchise holders in other commercial enterprise such as Dairy Queen et al. Just like Dairy Queen MLB has forced franchise holders to sell their clubs when an owner has violated the terms of their franchise agreement as in the case of the Cincy Reds during the Marge Schott era.

[notin]

First of all there is nothing shady about Major League Baseballs legal structure whether we like or not. Rightly or wrongly there have been three decisions of the UuS. Supreme Court over the past 100 years which has affirmed that structure. Secondly the MLB.logo and all the team logos are legal trademarks and owned by Major League Baseball and its licensees. Finally the relationship between MLB franchise holders is not that dissimilar between franchise holders in other commercial enterprise such as Dairy Queen et al. Just like Dairy Queen MLB has forced franchise holders to sell their clubs when an owner has violated the terms of their franchise agreement as in the case of the Cincy Reds during the Marge Schott era.

 

 

Exactly, and just like in MLB, Dairy Queen franchise owners can’t sell the company property for private gain i.e. owning a DQ franchise doesn’t give someone the legal right to make Dairy Queen tee shirts and sell them on Etsy.

 

(Dairy Queen probably wouldn’t waste their time pursuing legal action in this case, but they would certainly be able to.)

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

Exactly, and just like in MLB, Dairy Queen franchise owners can’t sell the company property for private gain i.e. owning a DQ franchise doesn’t give someone the legal right to make Dairy Queen tee shirts and sell them on Etsy.

 

(Dairy Queen probably wouldn’t waste their time pursuing legal action in this case, but they would certainly be able to.)

 

Our local DQ is on the side of the players. For my son's birthday, they made an ice cream cake with Devers hitting a home run on the top, imaged into the frosting from an internet pic my wife sent them.

[S5Dewey]

First of all there is nothing shady about Major League Baseballs legal structure whether we like or not. Rightly or wrongly there have been three decisions of the UuS. Supreme Court over the past 100 years which has affirmed that structure. Secondly the MLB.logo and all the team logos are legal trademarks and owned by Major League Baseball and its licensees. Finally the relationship between MLB franchise holders is not that dissimilar between franchise holders in other commercial enterprise such as Dairy Queen et al. Just like Dairy Queen MLB has forced franchise holders to sell their clubs when an owner has violated the terms of their franchise agreement as in the case of the Cincy Reds during the Marge Schott era.

 

I agree that the USSC has ruled three times that MLB is entitled to their exemption from anti-trust. But that doesn't make it less than 'not shady". There's a difference between illegal and shady. It's also worth mentioning that there were dissenting opinions from the USSC that made a lot of sense too. As Justice John Roberts said just recently, most people think that the USSC decides disputes of right and wrong when actually they settle disputes between two rights.

 

There's a BIG difference between MLB and Dairy Queen in that the franchisees of DQ don't own the parent company DQ. DQ is a publicly owned company (IDQ). MLB, OTOH, is a group of team owners, all but one of which are privately owned. They're also the group that puts the Commissioner of Baseball into office who serves at the pleasure of the owners. IOW, the COB is indebted to the owners. See the difference?

[Elktonnick]

You may find the following article in Constitution Daily written November 21, 2021 interesting:

 

On November 9, 1953, the United States Supreme Court upheld a prior, controversial decision that allowed major league baseball to operate outside of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

 

 

 

The one-paragraph, per-curium opinion left in place a decision from 1922 from the Court that found that baseball, at its highest level, was an exhibition and not subject to the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

 

Back in 2008, baseball fan and current Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito explained the unique circumstances in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, that unanimous decision from 1922 that has received some criticism over the years.

 

“Of all the Court’s antitrust cases, the Federal Baseball case may well be the most widely known, but what most people know about the case is not quite accurate,” Alito told an audience at the Supreme Court Historical Society.

 

Alito did acknowledge the legal critics who slammed three Court decisions about the baseball antitrust exemption, and especially the Federal Baseball Club opinion from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “It has been pilloried pretty consistently in the legal literature since at least the 1940s,” Alito said, referring to Holmes’ conclusion that “the business is giving exhibitions of base ball, which are purely state affairs" and outside of interstate commerce regulations.

 

Alito believed the Federal Baseball Club decision fit with the Court’s logic at the time and it wasn’t the product of a baseball-loving court, as some critics have suggested. “In 1922, the Court saw the Commerce Power as a limited power that did not extend to all ‘economic . . . activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.’ This approach forced the Court to draw fine—some would say arbitrary—lines,” Alito concluded.

 

The 1953 case at the Court, Toolson v. New York Yankees, was the first attempt to get the Court to reverse the precedent of Federal Baseball. The one-paragraph opinion said that Congress was the best arena to settle the issue, and not the Supreme Court.

 

“The business has thus been left for thirty years to develop, on the understanding that it was not subject to existing antitrust legislation. The present cases ask us to overrule the prior decision and, with retrospective effect, hold the legislation applicable. We think that if there are evils in this field which now warrant application to it of the antitrust laws it should be by legislation,” the Court concluded.

 

But two Justices attached dissents. Justice Harold Burton said that “Congress, however, has enacted no express exemption of organized baseball from the Sherman Act, and no court has demonstrated the existence of an implied exemption from that Act of any sport that is so highly organized as to amount to an interstate monopoly or which restrains interstate trade or commerce.”

 

The issue came back to the Court a second time for reconsideration in Flood v. Kuhn from 1972, when Curt Flood challenged baseball’s “reserve clause” that kept players from being free agents. In the Flood decision, a 5-3 majority said that baseball was indeed subject to commerce regulations, but the subject’s history compelled Congress – and not the Court – to take action to regulate baseball’s business activities.

 

Justice Harry Blackmun’s colorful majority opinion is still talked about today. Using flowery language, Blackmun finally concluded “that the remedy, if any is indicated, is for congressional, and not judicial, action.” The decision upheld the antitrust exemption.

 

Justice William O. Douglas dissented, even though he signed on to the Toolson decision back in 1953. “While I joined the Court's opinion in Toolson v. New York Yankee, Inc., I have lived to regret it; and I would now correct what I believe to be its fundamental error,” Douglas said.

 

In June 2017, a challenge to the baseball antitrust exemption failed in the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court, when a group of former minor-league baseball players sought compensation for what they felt were low wages forced on them by major league player contract standards. The three-person panel cited the three Supreme Court decisions as precedents about the antitrust exemption.

 

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.

 

Filed Under: Supreme Court

 

I agree that the USSC has ruled three times that MLB is entitled to their exemption from anti-trust. But that doesn't make it less than 'not shady". There's a difference between illegal and shady. It's also worth mentioning that there were dissenting opinions from the USSC that made a lot of sense too. As Justice John Roberts said just recently, most people think that the USSC decides disputes of right and wrong when actually they settle disputes between two rights.

 

There's a BIG difference between MLB and Dairy Queen in that the franchisees of DQ don't own the parent company DQ. DQ is a publicly owned company (IDQ). MLB, OTOH, is a group of team owners, all but one of which are privately owned. They're also the group that puts the Commissioner of Baseball into office who serves at the pleasure of the owners. IOW, the COB is indebted to the owners. See the difference?

A distinction without a difference.orr to put it more simply the difference is only in your mind. MLB is a legally owned patented trademark of Major League Baseball Properties Inc., A private company. There are numerous other patented legal trademarks of Major League Baseball Properties Inc. The terms Major League, Major League Baseball are also patented trademarks.

[notin]

A distinction without a difference.orr to put it more simply the difference is only in your mind. MLB is a legally owned patented trademark of Major League Baseball Properties Inc., A private company. There are numerous other patented legal trademarks of Major League Baseball Properties Inc. The terms Major League, Major League Baseball are also patented trademarks.

 

MLB Properties appears to be run similar to many other private corporate giants. For example, Cargill has a board of directors largely comprised of the Cargill and MacMillan families, who appoint a CEO (in this case, David MacLennon) to run the company. The MLB owners largely act like the BOD family members, and Manfred is the MLB doppelgänger for MacLennon…

[mvp 78]

@GerritCole45

I was at our PA meeting in AZ and it was exciting to see solidarity this high. We had 100+ players show up and are united to protect the integrity of the game.

[dgalehouse]

@GerritCole45

I was at our PA meeting in AZ and it was exciting to see solidarity this high. We had 100+ players show up and are united to protect the integrity of the game.

 

Folks, Gerrit Cole wants you to know this is all about " the integrity of the game." Not about money .

[Bellhorn04]

Folks, Gerrit Cole wants you to know this is all about " the integrity of the game." Not about money .

 

Yeah, when the highest paid pitcher in the game and certified sticky stuff user says that, it really makes you feel warm and fuzzy.

[notin]

Yeah, when the highest paid pitcher in the game and certified sticky stuff user says that, it really makes you feel warm and fuzzy.

 

He was talking about the other players there…

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

Cole is awesome, the Yankees are going all the way, preseason oddsmakers know, they win every year

[vegasbob]

Time keeps on slipping but still 33 days until the great handshake comes down, just in time to miss about 2 weeks of scheduled play. With the great legal research displayed in this thread, no doubt, Manfred and Clark will get a call from the 202 area code about March 18, advising the two sides to get their s*** together and play ball so as to not further piss off the voting public in an election year

[Elktonnick]

Folks, Gerrit Cole wants you to know this is all about " the integrity of the game." Not about money .

 

Whenever anyone says "It's not about the money" you can rest assured it's all about the money!

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

Whenever anyone says "It's not about the money" you can rest assured it's all about the money!

 

And any time they use the word "respect."

[oldtimer]

The results from the meeting today will be a litmus test for how the season will go forward. No real progress today will mean games will be missed.

[Nick]

For both sides it's about money. It's okay to say it. This is America.

 

There's a difference between me saying it's okay to 'strike' over money and me also saying fans probably won't sympathize with the players making league minimum of $500K. I have no sympathy for either side. I just want to watch baseball without increasing my participation fee.

[jad]

For both sides it's about money. It's okay to say it. This is America.

 

There's a difference between me saying it's okay to 'strike' over money and me also saying fans probably won't sympathize with the players making league minimum of $500K. I have no sympathy for either side. I just want to watch baseball without increasing my participation fee.

 

My 'participation fee' is $0, and I probably watch half the games the RS play. How anyone can support the billionaire bosses over the ones we watch perform is beyond me, but you know what you're about more than I do.

[oldtimer]

Not much progress today. An offer made by MLBB but other than saying it was unacceptable the Player union hasn't yet countered or negotiated. Not a good sign for early resolution.

[Nick]

My 'participation fee' is $0, and I probably watch half the games the RS play. How anyone can support the billionaire bosses over the ones we watch perform is beyond me, but you know what you're about more than I do.

 

My participation fee is $125 per year for the MLB package. Absolutely the best bargain on planet. Not sure how I can follow my beloved Red Sox without it. Let me know how I can get THAT down to zero.

[notin]

I’m seriously a lot less optimistic about there being a season….