Baseball History -- November 9

Coomplete Entry for November 9 at BaseballLibrary.com is HERE.

1982
Robin Yount, who hit .331 for Milwaukee and led the league in hits (210), doubles (46), and slugging percentage (.578), is a unanimous choice as American League MVP.

Guess who placed 2,3,4,&5 in the AL MVP voting in 1982. Click and drag on the white space below to see the answer.

2.) Eddie Murray - Baltimore
3.) Doug DeCinces - California
4.) Hal McRae - Kansas City
5.) Cecil Cooper - Milwaukee

Go HERE for the full list. If Yount was unanimous, how come this page shows Reggie Jackson (who finished sixth) with a first place vote?

1953
The U.S. Supreme Court decides 7-2 that baseball is a sport and not a business and therefore not subject to antitrust laws. The ruling is made in a case involving Yankee farmhand George Toolson, who refused to move from AAA to AA.

This will be a first on this blog, a link to and an excerpt from Legal Affairs.

Between 1903 and 1975, baseball teams abided by a "reserve clause" system insisted on by the owners. Teams were barred from bidding for one another's players—meaning each team enjoyed the exclusive right to re-sign their own players. Those who refused to return to their teams were blacklisted from baseball.

IF THIS SYSTEM HAD BEEN DEVISED BY AIRLINES to manage the nation's pilots, it would have been an obvious violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, instituted in 1890 to forbid collusion in the marketplace. But owing to a controversial Supreme Court ruling in 1922, baseball, alone among American professional sports, enjoyed immunity from antitrust prosecution. Writing for his fellow justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. dismissed the notion that baseball operates like a national business, saying that it involved "personal effort" but not "production" or "commerce." When the issue of baseball's exemption was revisited by the court in 1953 for a minor leaguer named George Toolson and again in 1972 over the status of the outfielder Curt Flood, the justices took issue with Holmes's logic but continued to uphold the exemption. Considering the time that had passed since the 1922 decision, they found that only Congress could change baseball's status—and it hadn't.

I'll never understand the law.