Baseball On Trial

Download or read book Baseball on Trial written by Nathaniel Grow and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2014-02-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The controversial 1922 Federal Baseball Supreme Court ruling held that the "business of base ball" was not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act because it did not constitute interstate commerce. In Baseball on Trial, legal scholar Nathaniel Grow defies conventional wisdom to explain why the unanimous Supreme Court opinion authored by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, which gave rise to Major League Baseball's exemption from antitrust law, was correct given the circumstances of the time. Currently a billion dollar enterprise, professional baseball teams crisscross the country while the games are broadcast via radio, television, and internet coast to coast. The sheer scope of this activity would seem to embody the phrase "interstate commerce." Yet baseball is the only professional sport--indeed the sole industry--in the United States that currently benefits from a judicially constructed antitrust immunity. How could this be? Drawing upon recently released documents from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Grow analyzes how the Supreme Court reached this seemingly peculiar result by tracing the Federal Baseball litigation from its roots in 1914 to its resolution in 1922, in the process uncovering significant new details about the proceedings. Grow observes that while interstate commerce was measured at the time by the exchange of tangible goods, baseball teams in the 1910s merely provided live entertainment to their fans, while radio was a fledgling technology that had little impact on the sport. The book ultimately concludes that, despite the frequent criticism of the opinion, the Supreme Court's decision was consistent with the conditions and legal climate of the early twentieth century.

Download or read book Baseball's Reserve System written by Neil F. Flynn and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On October 8, 1969, the St. Louis Cardinals traded center fielder Curt Flood to the Philadelphia Phillies. At the time of the trade, Flood was thirty-one years old, at the top of his game and in the prime of his life. In professional baseball, trades are not uncommon. What was different about this trade was that Curtis Charles Flood refused to recognize the - right - of the Cardinals to trade him to another team without his consent. In doing so, Flood challenged a practice that was designed and enforced by professional baseball owners for over eighty years - a practice commonly referred to as the - reserve system. It was the late 1960s - a decade of great racial tension and unrest; the Vietnam War was dividing the country; and now Curt Flood, a black man was challenging the lily-white major league baseball establishment.On January 16, 1970, Curt Flood filed suit in the Federal District Court in New York against major league baseball alleging that baseball?s reserve system violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and Flood?s rights under federal law. Flood argued that once he signed a contract (in his case, when he was eighteen years old), he was owned by (this team) for life and that the reserve system was tantamount to slavery.Flood?s decision to challenge major league baseball cost him his baseball career and much more. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court?s denial of Flood?s claims and ruling (in 1972) that professional baseball was exempt from federal antitrust regulation, professional baseball players had (free agency) by 1975. This is the story of Curt Flood?s case and trial against major league baseball and its aftermath.

Download or read book Courting Justice written by David Boies and published by Miramax. This book was released on 2004-10-13 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Yankees v. Major League Baseball; General Westmoreland v. CBS; FDIC v. Michael Milken; United States v. Microsoft; Bush v. Gore. In each of these landmark cases, one man, David Boies, has held center stage. Dubbed by the New York Times "the lawyer everyone wants," Boies has indeed been courted by government and major corporations alike, and by a host of the famous and powerful. His clients have included Calvin Klein; Don Imus; George Steinbrenner; and Garry Shandling, as well as companies such as DuPont; Altria; Lloyd's of London; and American Express. He has won record-breaking damages for consumers in cases against Sotheby's and Christie's and from major pharmaceutical companies worldwide, for price-fixing. His combination of legal know-how, meticulous preparation, and high-risk tactics at trial has earned him the sobriquet "the Michael Jordan of the courtroom." Written in the straightforward, sympathetic style that characterizes his courtroom presence, Courting Justice examines the varied clientele, behind-the-scenes dramas, and eleventh-hour strategies that have catapulted Boies to the top of the legal profession. His memoir ranges from his now-famous deposition of Bill Gates to the media-saturated battles of defending Vice President Al Gore during the 2000 Florida recount frenzy. when for days on end it was this one laconic nonpolitician who was asked to explain to the American people how their president was being decided. Through gripping accounts of some of his most notable cases, Boies brings to life not only his high-profile battles in and out of court but the details of his own life, from an unassuming boyhood in small-town Illinois and adolescence on the streets of Compton, to his brief career as a cardsharp (which helped hone his photographic memory), his lifelong fight with dyslexia and the lessons he learned in law schoolsone of which he was asked to leave. Inspiring, revealing, and compulsively readable, Courting Justice is an insider's look at the American legal system, highlighting both its strengths and its weaknesses, the ways it can be abused and the ways in which, at its best, it defends our liberties.

Download or read book Burying the Black Sox written by Gene Carney and published by Potomac Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New insight on baseball's most famous scandal

Download or read book The Pittsburgh Cocaine Seven written by Aaron Skirboll and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2010-07-27 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eerily prescient of times to come, this expose examines drug use in Major League Baseball (MLB) during the mid-1980s and one of the biggest drug trials in baseball history. Through a series of exclusive interviews with FBI agents, U.S. attorneys, defense lawyers, journalists, former baseball executives, physicians, and the dealers themselves, the narrative provides a behind-the-scenes look into how the players managed their habits, the effect of the drugs on their athletic performance, and the ruses the players concocted to keep their drug consumption from becoming public knowledge. Among the all-stars implicated as cocaine users were Joaquin Andujar, Dusty Baker, Dale Berra, Keith Hernandez, Lee Mazzilli, John Milner, Dave Parker, and Lonnie Smith, while Willie Mays and Willie Stargell were fingered as amphetamine users. In addition to identifying the players involved, this account reveals how the hapless group of mostly diehard Pittsburgh Pirates fans got into cocaine and connected with the players as well as the often comic "deals" that eventually got them busted. Then MLB Commissioner Peter Ueberroth's failure to implement a strict drug policy in the aftermath of the trial is also discussed, along with the role this inaction played in enabling the steroid era."

Download or read book One Man Out written by Robert Michael Goldman and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles star baseball player Curt Flood's attempt to overthrow the "reserve" clause system of professional baseball, which bound players to teams as a form of property. Although he lost his legal battle, the Court left the door open for the players to eventually negotiate a version of "free agency."

Download or read book The Philadelphia Titan The Adam Renfroe Jr. Story written by Adam Renfroe Jr. and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2019-11-18 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adam Renfroe, Jr. is the Philadelphia Titan. "Adam said he was gonna tell the truth in a book one day, and boy, did he ever tell it in this book" (a quote from a friend). Starting with a book proposal entitled "No Justice, Just Us: What Went Wrong with Major League Baseball," former Philadelphia attorney and baseball fan Adam Renfroe, Jr. set out to tell his personal and career-ending story about his 1985 courtroom battle with MLB and the Federal Government. A number of National League baseball stars were in trouble that year for the use, solicitation, and participation of recreational cocaine and its league-wide distribution baseball stars who including Dave Parker, Keith Hernandez, Dale Berra, and Lonnie Smith. This Major League Baseball drug scandal was a sign of the times in the American 1980s when the entire country was struggling with recreational drug addictions. This scandal became infamously known as the Pittsburgh Drug Trials. Tough-nosed attorney Adam Renfroe, Jr. was stuck right in the middle of it, defending a fellow Philadelphian, Curtis "Chef Curt" Strong, a Phillies fanatic caterer who had been accused of selling cocaine to several Philadelphia Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates' baseball players. But when Curtis Strong was faced with the prospect of doing hard time, Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Uberroth and head of the United States Department of Justice Edwin Meese had worked out a deal with the accused baseball players to give them immunity for their confessions by naming not only Chef Curt but several Pittsburgh area drug dealers who had unfortunately befriended and associated with this group of popular, wealthy, and obviously pampered baseball players who had found themselves addicted to cocaine and hungry to find their next fix. With MLB and the Federal Government in collusion, Adam Renfroe, Jr. was strongly advised to leave the case alone, play nice, and walk away from it like every other attorney had previously done. He was told that Curtis Strong and the rest of the group of ragtag, petty drug dealers were not worth putting his career on the line for in a case that he couldn't possibly win. But Adam was a stand-up guy and a North Philadelphia loyalist, who had been trained to fight to the finish in defense of the common man who needed it. It was the reason why he had become a lawyer in the first place. And in the aftermath of a long, revealing, and nationally televised and debated case, Adam Renfroe, Jr.'s career all came crumbling down. This book not only tells the story of his historical courtroom battle with Major League Baseball and the Federal Government but unravels the personal and professional struggles of a man who had the audacity to go up against the multimillionaires of Major League Baseball and the intimidating power of the Federal Government in the first place. So we give you Philadelphia Titan: The Adam Renfroe, Jr. Story, the lawyer who took Major League Baseball to trial.