Legal Decisions That Shaped Modern Baseball

This work takes a look at the cases that have had a significant influence on the game of baseball, such as Flood v. Kuhn and Garvey v. MLB, which either made it to the U.S. Supreme Court or brought up major legal issues in baseball. Also included are cases that explore legal issues in baseball but are not as well known and cases that appear in most sports law books. For each case, the historical and legal significance of the decision is discussed.

One of the greatest pitchers of the 19th century, Tim Keefe (1857-1933) was an ardent believer in the artisan work ethic that was becoming outmoded in burgeoning industrial America. A master craftsman, he compiled 342 career victories during his 14-season Major League career while adapting to numerous changes in pitching rules during the 1880s. Known as a strategic pitcher, he outsmarted batters, particularly with his change-of-pace pitch. He led the New York Giants to the National League pennant in 1888 and 1889, establishing a Major League record with 19 consecutive pitching victories in 1888. He taught pitching as a college baseball coach, wrote several articles about his craft and established a sporting goods firm where he manufactured a baseball of his own design. He was a proponent for players' rights as the secretary of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players, which formed the ill-fated Players' League in 1890. This first-ever biography of Keefe covers the career of the 1964 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee.

The Chalmers Race is the story of Ty Cobb and Napoleon Lajoie and the controversial 1910 batting race.

The national pastime’s rich history and vast cache of statistics have provided fans and researchers a gold mine of narrative and data since the late 19th century. Many books have been written about Major League Baseball’s most famous games. This one takes a different approach, focusing on MLB’s most historically significant games. Some will be familiar to baseball scholars, such as the October afternoon in 1961 when Roger Maris eclipsed Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record, or the compelling sixth game of the 1975 World Series. Other fascinating games are less well known: the day at the Polo Grounds in 1921, when a fan named Reuben Berman filed a lawsuit against the New York Giants, winning fans the right to keep balls hit into the stands; the first televised broadcast of an MLB game in 1939; opening night of the Houston Astrodome in 1965, when spectators no longer had to be taken out to the ballgame; or the spectator-less April 2015 Orioles-White Sox game, played in an empty stadium in the wake of the Baltimore riots. Each game is listed in chronological order, with detailed historical background and a box score.

In late 1913 the newly formed Federal League declared itself a major league in competition with the established National and American Leagues. Backed by some of America’s wealthiest merchants and industrialists, the new organization posed a real challenge to baseball’s prevailing structure. For the next two years the well-established leagues fought back furiously in the press, in the courts, and on the field. The story of this fascinating and complex historical battle centers on the machinations of both the owners and the players, as the Federals struggled for profits and status, and players organized baseball’s first real union. Award winning author, Daniel R. Levitt gives us the most authoritative account yet published of the short-lived Federal League, the last professional baseball league to challenge the National League and American League monopoly.

PLEASE NOTE: This book is available only as an ebook. Print copies are not available. Baseball and the Law: Cases and Materials explores the jurisprudence of baseball through 110 principal readings, 619 notes, and 26 photographs. After an introductory chapter that acquaints students with the sport and the role lawyers have played in its development, the authors proceed to examine a multitude of legal issues, from player salaries, franchise relocations, and steroids to fan safety, broadcast rights, and gambling. Special attention is paid to racial and sexual discrimination; tax planning, asset protection, and bankruptcy; and the burgeoning use of technology. A concluding chapter focuses on amateur and youth baseball. The book draws on a variety of materials--including court decisions, arbitration awards, law review articles, newspapers stories, and blog posts--to place baseball in three different contexts: cultural, historical, and legal. The exhaustive notes make numerous references to movies, TV shows, and videos to further demonstrate the connection between baseball and the law. In addition to being a fun read, this work will strengthen a student''s understanding of such core subjects as civil procedure, constitutional law, property, and torts while improving his or her ability to read contracts and parse statutes. The accompanying Teacher''s Manual provides invaluable tips for both new and experienced instructors. Baseball and the Law received the 2017 Baseball Research Award, awarded by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). "The authors have adopted a familiar casebook format, presenting edited opinions followed by notes providing legal and factual context. While this book''s format is traditional, the content is anything but. Chapters are designed to orient readers to the variety of legal issues involving commissioners, teams, stadiums, players, fans, and amateurs. Through the authors'' efforts to collect and organize these cases, Baseball and the Law illuminates how the law shapes the way baseball is played and enjoyed." -- The Harvard Law Review "[This book] is like no baseball book I''ve ever had the pleasure to pick up (or, at hardback and 1,040 pages, do curls with). [...] I''m neither a lawyer nor a reviewer of books, but I find Baseball and the Law to be a fun volume to have on the bookshelf. Gift givers looking for a baseball item for the fan who has everything have something unique to consider as a stocking stuffer. Because unless your fan is a student or a professor at a participating law school, (s)he doesn''t have this." -- Howard Cole, Forbes "I must confess that when I read Baseball and the Law, it was the first textbook I could remember that I actually enjoyed reading. It is not only a significant compilation of the cases that have provided the law relating to baseball, it is also a remarkable history of the sport and the business surrounding it. After a couple of essays in the introduction, the authors begin with a review of baseball cases dating back to the 1800s. While I am no expert in baseball law, I cannot conceive of any area of baseball law that is not covered by the book. I have to assert that Baseball and the Law is a phenomenal compilation of the law regarding most, if not all, facets of baseball litigation and law. It is truly an enjoyable read." -- Major B. Harding (former chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court and shareholder with Ausley McMullen in Tallahassee), The Florida Bar Journal "For anyone who has a deep interest in the game of baseball and wants to understand its legal history, this is a fascinating book as well as a great reference tool." -- Vince Gennaro, President of Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) "[Schiff and Jarvis have] combined their work and play to create an innovative way to teach law--and perhaps expand the trivia repertoire of diehard fans. [Baseball and the Law] is a 1,040-page look at 110 of the game''s most intriguing or iconic legal disputes...The extensive and sometimes intriguing case notes span centuries. They reach from 1791, when a Massachusetts town passed an ordinance banning baseball from being played within 250 feet of a church (to protect its windows) to modern-day rulings reflecting the rise of performance drug use by professional athletes." -- Diane C. Lade, South Florida Sun-Sentinel "[This book] covers a slew of cases involving Baseball and the law...Readers can find litigation involving George Steinbrenner, Pete Rose, John Rocker and the Black Sox, along with cases about antitrust laws, fans, teams, comissioners, broadcast rights, gambling, owner conduct, competitive balance, baseball cards and even hot dogs being shot into the stands. Schiff and Jarvis spice up the book with informative and colorful notes that even a layman can understand. The scope of their research is breathtaking, drawing from books, magazines, broadcasts, scholarly works and newspapers." -- Bob D''Angelo, The Sports Bookie "As prolific baseball book reviewer Ron Kaplan has already written about this one: "The closest I''ll ever get to law school" is reading this. We agree. And we''d also encourage anyone who thinks they may have a shot at becoming the MLB Commissioner some day, start by lawyering up and investing knowledge here about how the game is still held together by the strings of historical court documents." -- Tom Hoffarth, Farther Off the Wall "The casebook''s coverage is comprehensive. Cases are organized from baseball''s point of view, rather than traditional categoies of legal subject areas. There are chapters on Commissioners, Teams, Stadiums, Players, Fans and Amateurs. I think this is a helpful approach: generally speaking, outside the walls of law schools and law firms, client''s legal problems are not organized into legal categoies, and the sooner students realize this, the better. [...]I wondered whether women would be missing entirely from such a casebook, but this isn''t true of Baseball and the Law and it feels like the authors made a deliberate effort to address this concern. In addition to a number of cases dealing with sex discrimination ... the Notes discuss MLB''s domestic violence policy and women''s history and future in professional baseball as players and umpires; a number of women are cited in the Notes, particularly in the Introduction; and there are photos of Justice Sonia Sotomayor (''''the woman who saved baseball'''' and the 1995 season) throwing out the first pitch at a Yankees game and of Little League World Series pitching phenom Mo''ne Davis. [...]the Notes are a goldmine of baseball facts and lore, and, more importantly, help to place the cases in their historical and social context. This brings the cases to life and made me want to read the next case which is exactly what law professors want their students to do, and should be the ultimate goal of any law school casebook." -- Gail Henderson, University of Alberta''s Faculty Blog "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball. So wrote French philosopher Jacques Barzum in a 1954 book, "God''s Country and Mind." Maybe he should have written that whoever wants to know about American law should learn baseball. That''s the approach taken by a Broward County judge and a Nova Southeastern law professor who have just published Baseball and the Law, a 1,040 page textbook intended to spark teaching the subject at law schools, and just maybe provide some entertaining and educational reading for the baseball-afflicted lawyers." -- Gary Blankenship, The Florida Bar News "When it comes to baseball and the courts ... Baseball and the Law spells out many of the cases that made Milwaukee famous in baseball jurisprudence--cases that helped shape the game as it is today." -- Chris Foran, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (from 11 new baseball books to add to your lineup) "Baseball and the Law offers a wealth of information for students and baseball fans alike... Schiff and Jarvis present cases and notes that help us appreciate, understand, and gain insight into some of the most important legal and social issues of the past and present... The abundance of information and wealth of knowledge that this text offers makes it an invaluable resource... [I]t is current, enthusiastic, well-researched, thorough, and full of fascinating, historical details (lots of interesting baseball trivia too)... One of the most enjoyable aspects of the text is the notes following the cases. The notes practically comprise a treatise on baseball law and lore in and of themselves." -- Russ VerSteeg, Marquette Sports Law Review "Baseball and the Law is intended to be a textbook for courses in this specialized area. It is probably ideal for its intended purpose, but it is also a remarkable reference tool for anyone interested in the topic. The greatest strength of the book is its level of detail. It is more than one thousand pages of big-picture overview, small details, and reference after reference. Every baseball-related legal case I have ever heard of, as well as hundreds that I knew nothing about, appears to be excerpted or described in the text. Further, the authors reference baseball historians, philosophers, political scientists, journalists, and bloggers who have written on the topic. These references are more than simply citations; rather, they are brief summations of the author''s points and sometimes a critique of that perspective. These references are more like an annotated bibliography than the traditional footnotes to which a sport historian might be used." --Sarah K. Field, Journal of Sport History "This is a book that every lawyer who is also a baseball fan (or any kind of sports fan) will enjoy reading and referencing... It is hard to write about baseball without, wel

Baseball and law have intersected since the primordial days. In 1791, a Pittsfield, Massachusetts, ordinance prohibited ball playing near the town's meeting house. Ball games on Sundays were barred by a Pennsylvania statute in 1794. In 2015, a federal court held that baseball's exemption from antitrust laws applied to franchise relocations. Another court overturned the conviction of Barry Bonds for obstruction of justice. A third denied a request by rooftop entrepreneurs to enjoin the construction of a massive video screen at Wrigley Field. This exhaustive chronology traces the effects the law has had on the national pastime, both pro and con, on and off the field, from the use of copyright to protect not only equipment but also "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" to frequent litigation between players and owners over contracts and the reserve clause. The stories of lawyers like Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Branch Rickey are entertainingly instructive.