The Starting Nine

 

Last week marked the 80^th anniversary of the Doolittle raids over Tokyo. While more of a psychological victory than military turning point, the heroes of that campaign are now gone. A mere 20 years before that another battle was fought, one with consequences still felt today. Yes 2022 marks a century since the Supreme Court granted baseball certain immunities from anti-trust restrictions.

At the time the justices provided a narrow, if not nuanced, view of how they carved out this great legal exception. Their reasoning included, in part, “The business is giving exhibitions of baseball, which are purely state affairs. It is true that, in order to attain for these exhibitions the great popularity that they have achieved, competitions must be arranged between clubs from different cities and states. But the fact that, in order to give the exhibitions, the Leagues must induce free persons to cross state lines and must arrange and pay for their doing so is not enough to change the character of the business.” Jurisprudence may dictate that free persons were not adversely affected by all of this. However, I’m sure the court might look at this differently if they, like me, had to shell out the not-so-free 140 bucks for a season of games on MLB.com.

With Easter and The Masters comfortably behind us, many, especially Knicks fans, now look forward to the daily ritual of following baseball. The beginning of the season brings hope (everyone, even the Mets, are in first place for one day!) and naysayers—the game takes too long, the universal designated hitter weakens the game, etc. But the New York Times managed, and who knew they could, to go completely overboard by publishing an opinion piece entitled “Baseball is dying. The government should take it over.”

Laying out any number of reasons why baseball is now culturally irrelevant, the author suggested a federal buyout and takeover of the game. Social equity would be achieved by lowering the highest salaries and, of course, raising the lowest salaries. Various parts of management would become elected officials. Baseball would become what so much of the classical arts world now is—just a government-subsidized exhibition.

I guess the whole thing was supposed to be funny. Had it at least been snarky I would have known to laugh a little, even admire the attempt at humor. But when the logic of it all maps directly AOC's socialist platform, it becomes a creepy way to envision the future, especially with a stated end goal of “A strict salary cap could be imposed to help ensure competitive parity between teams.” Maybe it was supposed to be funny after all—ask the Knicks, Jets, and Giants how much parity there has been with their strict salary caps.

Yet on opening day, with my Amex angry over its latest assault, and against a blur of new and incomprehensible statistics ("expected batting average from the exit velocity and angle of the ball off the bat" anyone?), I turned on the TV, booted up the MLB app, and watched the hated Red Sox play at Yankee Stadium (unless, of course, my boss is reading this—in which case I was hard at work). It was a very capitalistic exhibition—the very rich watching millionaires play in a billionaire’s palace. Befitting the usual manner of both teams, the game crawled through four hours and even extra innings. But in the bottom of the 11^th the Yanks won on a walk-off single driving in a runner from second. Sure that runner was there because of a change in the rules “to speed up the game,” but euphoria erupted nonetheless. And that anti-trust exempted $140 I had to spend? Worth every penny.

 

© 2022 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.