Baseball is a game, run and overseen by a professional organization with a vested interest (e.g., publicity, fairness) in keeping it as drug free as possible. Given the amount of money baseball pulls in, it’s hard to convince me that they don’t have the resources to self police.
Which is why I find it mind-boggling that Congress is holding hearings on steroid use. I get that baseball has some specific laws and exemptions (I believe it receives monopoly protection, for example), but even if this were a Federal issue, wouldn’t the FBI or other investigative/prosecutorial arm be in charge? Are the hearings to determine if Congress should nationalize baseball or craft game-specific legislation? Are we about to see the Department of Baseball set up as a new Cabinet-level bureaucracy? Is Congress next going to start calling in musicians and investigating drug use and the creative process? What about visual artists?
I get that if Congress wanted to bring in truck drivers and whatnot to investigate allegations of speed use in the transportation sector, public safety is at stake and relevant laws have justification. But … but … baseball is a game.
Baseball is also a business. They’re not removing the home plate, they’re not changing the rules of the game. They’re spooking a business that has no direct competition into acting “right.”
That said, they’re fucking stupid for even thinking about wasting my money discussing this non-issue.
Baseball operates under exemptions to the Anti-Trust Act. Congress created this industry. Congress decided to make decisions about it. Congress is stuck with it now.
It’s an opportunity for political theater, so the pols can put on a great show of indignation as to how our “national sport” is threatened. It’s the old motherhood & apple pie cliché raised to a new level.
“Steroids? In professional baseball? I’m shocked! SHOCKED!”
Sorry, I’m way too cynical to buy that. Their vested interest is in making money. Steroids increase performance, which draws crowds. The exception seems to be the Barry Bonds controversy, which I think nobody would have cared about had he not set a record.
This is the same thing that they’re saying allows Arlen Spector to pull Roger Goodell in for questioning about the Patriots taping allegations. I don’t understand the Anti Trust allowances that these organizations are supposed to have. Is the NFL or is MLB stopping someone else from starting a league of their own? Last I checked Vince McMahon tried starting his own football league, but it didn’t fail because the NFL blocked him out. What kind of trust do the ruling associations have over sports? They don’t own all the teams, so can someone please explain to me what this is all about?
The exact effect of the various anti-trust exemptions can’t be specified, because since the exemption is in place the issues never get litigated. In the case of MLB, however, if the exemption were removed, the agreements by which independently owned minor legaue teams act as farm teams for major league teams would probably be subject to challenge as an anti-trust violation. In addition, the rules requiring other owners to approve any time a team gets sold or relocated would almost certainly be illegal.
I’m less knowledgeable about exemptions (and their effects) in other sports.
Here’s another one, why doesn’t Roger Clemens tell congress to kiss his potentially chemically enhanced ass and tell them to charge him with a crime if they feel they have sufficent evidance to convict him? As it seems now it looks like he’s being tried in public without the benefit of due process. He can’t confront his accuser, there’s been little if any disclosure to his attorney of what congress has as evidance, it’s a joke. He has the right to all of these things as a citizen, so why not insist on them?
I chalk these hearings up to Woodrow Wilson’s writings on Congress: “It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. It is meant to be the eyes and the voice, and to embody the wisdom and will of its constituents. Unless Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and the disposition of the administrative agents of the government, the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served; and unless Congress both scrutinise these things and sift them by every form of discussion, the country must remain in embarrassing, crippling ignorance of the very affairs which it is most important that it should understand and direct. The informing function of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function.”
The general idea is that the oversight Congress provides on national affairs helps to inform the public of current issues, whether or not Congress intends to legislate on the matter.
The point that Wilson was talking mostly about affairs of the Executive Branch, and Congress is looking into matters of how a business (a special business) runs its operations with respect to Federal laws on steroid use, is readily acknowledged.
No, but that’s not the issue. Each team is an individually owned company but is under the global jurisdiction of MLB. MLB says which teams are allowed to be in the league, and dictates many rules of behavior for the teams (such as how trades can be conducted, the draft, trademark protection, etc.) that would be illegal for any other type of business. Can you imagine Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google all getting together once a year to take turns picking to whom they will have the exclusive right to make job offers? That would be a type of anti-competitive collusion.
Anti-trust doesn’t really mean anti-monopoly, even though the government seems to be using it that way these days. The collection of baseball teams act as a legal trust, which is to say they are allowed to collude (there are probably all kinds of stipulations as to what’s allowed, IANAL).
I thought only Major League Baseball had the anti-trust exemption, but the NFL was still bound by the Sherman Anti-Trust act. As I recall, the USFL WON their anti-trust case in court, they just didn’t end up with real money because there was no longer an entity to collect it. And the XFL was not blocked by the NFL, and in fact had a TV deal with NBC, but they just didn’t make enough money because people didn’t like the product all that much.
This was an excellent post. I may be in the minority in being totally fine with Congress going after steroids in baseball (football next?), Spygate in the NFL, etc. In fact, they could throw more money and investigative resources at it, and I’d be thrilled. I consider it tax dollars well spent.
Nearly every baseball teams plays in a stadium paid for or subsidized by taxpayer money. Thus it is incumbent on an elected authority to see that the taxpayer is spent to the taxpayer’s satisfaction.
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 allows football, baseball, basketball and hockey to negotiate broadcasting deals in a manner which would otherwise be considered a trust - in other words, individual teams don’t get to negotiate national TV deals, the NFL does.
The same rule doesn’t apply to college sports, which is why college TV packages are negotiated by conferences rather than the NCAA.
This is technically immaterial. Stadiums are paid for with local and/or state funds, not federal funds. Congress doesn’t have any business overseeing stadium funding; that’s the job of the state legislature and/or local commissions/mayors/whoever.
He doesn’t have to answer any questions that may incriminate him, but if he refused to answer any questions at all or to even show up he’d be in contempt of congress and looking at jail time. They may be raking him over the coals in the court of public opinion, but he’s not technically looking at any kind of punishment or responding to the equivalent of criminal charges at this point - they’re just making an inquiry.
The fifth Amendment applies to criminal proceedings, not Congressional hearings.
He is required to answer whatever they ask. The Fifth Amendment in this case only means that any confession he makes in front of Congress is inadmissible in a potential criminal proceeding.
Upon further review of the facts, I should correct myself. The Sherman Anti-Trust act, the first such legislation, prohibit companies from colluding to conspire to restrain trade. But it also prohibits anyone from attempting to monopolize trade. The trust was the legal instrument used for the early conspirators to create monopolistic entities and cartels (per Wikipedia).
The MLB arrangement is a cartel because it’s a bunch of companies acting to control a specific market.
MLB itself is not a monopoly because, AFAIK, there is nothing preventing someone else from starting a professional baseball league, but in fact there is probably not a large enough market for it for an additional league to exist.