(Bill) Duke Neukom and MLB's Antitrust Exemption

Preface: Let's please refrain from the Oakland vs. SJ banter here and instead focus on what may happen from the Giants side if the Blue Ribbon Panel appointed by Selig recommends a move dispelling the territorial rights for SJ.

I'm about 5000 miles away from my beloved Bay Area at the tail end of a 5 week whirlwind busin ess trip through Vietnam, HK, and mainland China en route to Shanghai. Usually on these types of flights, they offer beautiful flight attendants, "unique" Chinese food which you'll need some Peptol Bismol later for, and some local propaganda material often called "periodicals" to read aboard to pass time away. So for the next 3 hours, i get my usual dosage of the Financial Times, The China South Seas Daily, and the International Herald (which is the global edition of the NY Times). 

As i peruse through the articles, between reading about a Chinese tourist group was berated for being cheap in HK and how to choose a proper Chinese penis dish, suddenly one jumps out at me: an interview with A's public enemy #1, Bill "Duke" Neukum. They detail a man who was lucky to be assigned to Microsoft early on (through Bill Gate's father) and ascended to the top to be MIckeysoft's general counsel advising on all legal matters, especially that of the US governments attempts on anti-trust. With the previous Gnats owner, Peter McGowan, departing, the #1 business issue on the Gnat's radar was the A's pending move. So, is it no wonder that the GoG (Gnat's ownership Group) selected Duke as the new general managing partner during this transitional period: if he can give the middle finger to Uncle Sam, he definitely do the same to Selig and the A's!

Turning back to the rest of the article, they directly approach upon the territorial rights issue of the SJ  and he was very, very adamant on the matter: All your base are belong to us! Furthermore, if MLB does recommend rescinding these rights, DUke would pull out his lawyer-whoop-ass-Neukom-BFG5000 and slap MLB and the city of SJ silly with a lawsuit the size of the Windows source code. Would you expect anything less out of a lawyer, especially in the state of California?!

Before we can make some logical conclusions on these statements, we must delve into the legal and historical side of things a bit. Established in 1922, Base ball was given the Antitrust Exemption (AE) clause to have unconditional authority on matters related to their league w/o respect to laws that prevent monopolistic tendencies and also to make sure Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio would stop dating Congressman's wives. At the time, Supreme Court judges were not required to take Geography in school and made this decision on the notion that was MLB was a "local" matter and would be exempt from federal commerce regulation even though the league was interstate.

This was challenged a couple of times in MLB's history: 1) 1953 when something people don't know or cared happened 2) again in 1972 when Curt Flood wanted to change his last name, but was rejected by MLB owners. This escalated to the Supreme court who were scared that baseball players would date their wives and ruled that it was a congressional matter and not judicial. With this in mind, after the 1994-1995 labor dispute, it was agreed by the owners and MLBPA to not date congressional wives and instead actors, movie stars, and singers (see A.Roid) and also request an appeal of some of the AE to Congress. This brought forth the 1998 Curt Flood Act which gave the MLBPA rights as a union consistent with other major sports to date those actors, movie stars, and singers. It also reaffirmed that the AE (and more specifically MLB and its owners) governs what, where, how, and who MLB can date including those in the minor leagues, broadcasting booths, and ownership circles. Oh, they also put in a little FYI. at the end that also says they can also tell you where a team can RELOCATE to take care of the last W! And just to be clear, they also put a P.S. at the very end again reconfirming their dating exclusion deal with Congress so that the Supreme Court could not change any part of their wtf-was-i thinking-when-i-signed this deal. 

So now where does this lead us? Let's stroll down memory lane and pretend we've been listening to too much KNBR back in 1992 and mimicing Roger Craig's "Hmmm Baby" matra. At the time, the Gnats owner, Bob Lurie, wanted to sell the team and relocate to Tampa Bay hoping to rename it the Giant Manta Rays. But other MLB owners refused to permit the sale because they were pissed off they couldn't watch new episodes of Steve Irwin! This eventually forced Lurie to sell to a local owner Peter Magowan with the A's blessing to SJ because the organization was run by real angels (RIP Haas). The 1998 Curt Flood act added this aspect of relocation clause in case there were any questions about the authority over relocation from this event. In other words, the Gnats did this on purpose knowing the A's were going to try to move in SJ 25 years later - omgwtfbbq!

As we all know, the Blue Ribbon Panel assigned by Selig is in its 16 month now of burning MLBs money of this so called "investigation". It took much less time to publish the MLB steroid findings, have Shanghai build the SWFC skyscraper, or the FBI to figure we have stupid Russian agents on US soil. So what's taking them so long? I think there are several clues to this starting with the Open Letter from Larry Stone to Duke which states: "Duke, don't be so 1998. Remember your father Duke. Use the Force." or something like that. I'm pretty confident that after MLB officals were schmoozing with SJ, they were confident they can get enough owners to get on board. However, after discussion with Duke, he wanted more and threatened to use the only things he knows and loves to do: more litigation. However, this would be futile since the MLB constitution prohibits owners to go all suicide on each other, well unless he can challenge the supreme guidance of the AE. With Duke having intimate knowledge of the government judicial system as well as knowing vast amounts of lawyers coast to coast, and having the funding to back it up (he is one of the world's richest man after all),  I'm sure Selig is trying to come to some compromise with Duke as well as prepare his own team for defense. The last thing that Selig wants to do is to wipe away the AE over Oakland, which would be a small pawn in Duke's overall strategy to checkmate Selig and the AE. If Duke were ever to effectively challenge the AE, and make it a judicial matter again, Wolff and SJ could face years upon years of litigation to stall any move to SJ (and this is on top of the years to challenge the AE). I'm no lawyer, but this is the end game as I see it.

Credits: 

Baseball Prospectus: Ending Baseball's Antitrust Exemption 

Beyond the Boxscore: he History of Baseball's Antitrust Exemption