Saturday, August 17, 2002
Lawmakers unlikely to go to bat for game
Congress: Baseball a 'private business'
By Derrick DePledge
Enquirer Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — On those familiar summer nights along the third-base side at Cinergy Field, Mike DeWine is just another Reds fan wondering when his team will return to the glory of a league championship.
But as an Ohio senator and ranking member of the Senate antitrust committee, he can have some influence over the financial issues that threaten the game he loves.
WILL BASEBALL
STRIKE OUT?
![[img]](http://reds.enquirer.com/2002/08/17/dontstrike2_150x200.jpg)
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“There is no way the Cincinnati Reds will ever be able to generate a fraction of the money that the Mets can generate, or the Braves can generate, let alone the New York Yankees,” Mr. DeWine says. “The bottom line is we start from a terrible competitive disadvantage.”
His complaints echo those of many lawmakers who worry about the future of baseball. But worry is about all they have done. The U.S. Supreme Court has invited Congress to change the game in a series of court cases but lawmakers have been extremely reluctant to get involved in any meaningful way.
As owners and players spiral toward what could be baseball's ninth work stoppage in 30 years, observers from both sides in the dispute, and many lawmakers themselves, doubt Congress will intervene.
Some say Congress has more important issues to work on. Others blame a lack of public support for intervention or the lobbying by powerful owners. Still others believe lawmakers would prefer that baseball resolve problems on its own.
Kevin Grace, an archivist who teaches a course on baseball history at the University of Cincinnati, says lawmakers, as the political voice of the fans, have a legitimate interest in the game, but should only step in during emergencies.
“There is a naove assumption that baseball is a public trust. It's not. It's a business, and it's a private business,” he says. “These are not air traffic controllers. People's lives are not at stake.”
In July, the House passed a non-binding resolution by Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., demanding that players undergo mandatory steroids testing, a sensitive topic in collective bargaining negotiations. Rep. John Isakson, R-Ga., and Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., have resolutions that urge federal mediators to step in and avert a strike. The House and Senate each have bills, now on hold, that would shred baseball's coveted exemption from federal antitrust law by removing team contraction and relocation issues.
Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., a Hall of Fame pitcher, has also called for a federal baseball czar to mediate labor talks, but he doubts President Bush, a former team owner, would approve.
Not interstate commerce
Baseball has a unique legal shield that has survived as the game evolved from a national curiosity into a multi-billion-dollar industry.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1922 that baseball was a state matter rather than interstate commerce and exempted the sport from federal antitrust law, which prohibits monopoly business practices. The exemption has helped insulate the game from lawsuits claiming that baseball conspires to control team ownership and location, player contracts or broadcast rights.
The court upheld the exemption in 1953 and 1972, finding that even though baseball had turned into big business and was clearly interstate commerce, it was up to Congress to define the exemption's scope.
Baseball executives argue that the exemption has discouraged the kind of franchise relocation seen recently in other sports, but the exemption has also given Congress an opening to question the game in a way that it has not in other sports.
Several times over the past 80 years, individual lawmakers have used the exemption as a stick to force hearings or wield influence over the game, but there has never been enough political will or consensus to revoke what the court has described as an aberration.
Connie Mack III, a former Florida senator whose grandfather was a legendary manager of the old Philadelphia Athletics, says there has been no strong public demand for action on what is a convoluted legal issue.
He once talked of revoking the exemption when baseball was slow to expand into his home state. “It's been used in the past to try to get their attention,” says Mr. Mack, a senior policy adviser at the law firm of Shaw Pittman in Washington.
Frustrated lawmakers threatened to remove labor issues from the exemption during the last baseball strike in 1994, but ultimately backed away. The owners and players agreed to jointly ask Congress to amend the exemption when they finally signed a new labor deal three years later.
Only then did Congress act, approving a bill in 1998 that made it clear that federal antitrust law applies to labor negotiations between owners and players, just as it does in other sports.
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Lawmakers unlikely to go to bat for game
