Let’s skip talk on real estate. Instead, I have a much more pressing issue that goes to the heart of what we stand for, what we believe in, how we live our lives and if we’ll be alive to see the New Year. Of course, I’m talking about major league baseball. Most of you don’t know this, but MLB is exempt from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, backed up by an opinion written by Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes. In that famous case Federal Baseball Club v. National League, 259 U.S. 200 (1922), Justice Holmes wrote that interstate commerce did not apply to MLB, and thus the act doesn’t apply. One of the most absurd decisions to come down from the High Court since its inception. Now MLB has become big business. It no longer is controlled and operated by lovers of the game of baseball, but rather by large corporations who make decisions based on bean counters and bottom line fanatics. We see this every day in the sports columns, in ticket prices, in parking prices, in player salaries and now television broadcast rights. Which brings me to the point of this blog. We’re now entering the 40th game of the season of 161 games, and still no contract has been made between Time Warner and the other cable carriers. It’s all about money, as usual, and the fans are suffering as a result of corporate greed. I’m spending my whole season subject to the corporate greed of MLStv.com and Time Warner. I resent it and I feel violated. They blackout local games. They hold our right to view games hostage to a cable contract, and they operate as if the fans have no say in any matter at all. Well guess what? We’re citizens, and we do have input on their exemption. MLB just can’t have it both ways; either they operate in the public interest with their exemption to Sherman Anti-Trust, or Congress yanks that from them and permits competition in an open marketplace, just like the rest of us. Are they operating in a public interest environment or a for-profit environment? Are they putting fan interests ahead of their own? This exemption can be traced to the demise of the Federal League in 1915, and the owner of the Baltimore Club claiming (rightfully so) that the owners of the American League and the National League used illegal business practices in order to garner and control market share, and consequently fold themselves into Major League Baseball with no meaningful competition. Maybe it’s just about time that our elected fools who comprise our do-nothing Congress take a look at this and decide if MLB has in fact been taking advantage of their exemption, outside of the rules of interstate commerce, as defined in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Or maybe they’ll just do nothing, like they always do, pointing the finger at someone else and shrugging their shoulders. If I ran my company like they run Washington, I would be in jail and bankrupt.
