Baseball is in trouble, again. Another player strike looms. The World Series may be canceled for the second time in a decade. Commissioner Bud Selig is threatening to eliminate teams. Fans are incensed over Selig's decision to declare last week's All-Star Game a tie after 11 innings. And just like every other time baseball has been in turmoil recently, sportswriters and politicians are making noises about revoking the sport's antitrust exemption.
The antitrust exemption is an irony. Owners and players prove day after day that they consider baseball above all a business. But the exemption stems from the government's naive insistence that baseball is only a game. Alone among professional sports, baseball enjoys immunity from antitrust prosecution because neither Congress nor the Supreme Court has been willing to overturn an ancient decision that baseball is merely an amusement, not a commercial enterprise.
The controversial antitrust exemption dates to the early years of organized ball. In January 1903, the American and National Leagues united to form Major League Baseball. They systematically included a "reserve clause" in their contracts (as had already been National League practice for 25 years), which bound athletes to the teams that first signed them. Players could be sold or traded, but they couldn't simply sign with new teams when their contracts expired.
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