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4 The Landis Case January 1915 “We’re going to break up organized baseball,”Federal League president Jim Gilmore excitedly exclaimed to a reporter from Baseball Magazine on the morning of January 5, 1915. “I have just come from my lawyers. We filed this bill with Judge [Kenesaw Mountain] Landis,” he explained. Gilmore then described his bold aims for the lawsuit:“We’ll sue them for conspiracy and for restraint of trade.We’ll break up the baseball trust and the National Commission. We’ll free every ball player in the United States. We’ll have the courts declare them free agents and we’ll put a stop once and for all to this calling us outlaws and making libelous remarks about our financial standing and all that kind of business. . . . And we’ll win, too. Our cause is just, our arguments are sound.”1 The Federal League’s ninety-two-page complaint was as ambitious as Gilmore described. Formally captioned Federal League of Professional Base Ball Clubs v. National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, the suit was filed in federal district court in Chicago, naming both the American and National Leagues as defendants, along with the sixteen major league franchises , and each of the three members of the National Commission: August Herrmann, Ban Johnson, and John Tener.2 The complaint asserted three primary legal claims against the major leagues: (i) that they had formed an illegal monopoly in violation of federal antitrust law, (ii) that their illegal monopoly also violated state antitrust law, and (iii) that they had conspired to injure or destroy the Federal League. Specifically, the complaint began by describing the Federal League, noting that it had been formed in Indiana in 1913, and that the league and its “constituent members” (that is, teams) were all engaged “in the business of baseball” with more than $3 million invested to date. The document Grow_text.indd 65 12/20/13 11:37 AM 66 chapter four further explained that the league had always operated outside the National Agreement, and had never attempted to join organized baseball. Next, it discussed the history of the formation of both the American and National Leagues, in the process identifying the official state of residence of each of the defendants.3 This latter, seemingly innocuous information would become a particularly important aspect of the Federals’ case, providing them with an additional basis on which to maintain the suit in federal court. Although federal courts typically preside over cases involving federal law, pursuant to the doctrine of “diversity jurisdiction” they will also entertain lawsuits brought under state law if (i) the plaintiff(s) and defendant(s) reside in different states, and (ii) a sufficient amount of money is at stake in the suit ($3,000 in 1915). The Federals would rely on diversity jurisdiction to keep their suit in federal court if the judge held that their federal antitrust claims were inapplicable. Later in the complaint, in fact, the Federal League explained that its eight teams did not formally appear as parties in the case on account of potential“technical questions of jurisdiction. . . .”4 The league offered to include the teams in the suit, however, if the defendants agreed to waive these jurisdictional objections. The parties would ultimately debate this issue in court. From there, the complaint launched into a lengthy discussion of the business of baseball. It characterized each of the major leagues as a circuit consisting of eight teams in different cities, with the teams having to travel across state lines to play games in front of paying audiences. The Federals also explained that each major league employed a number of umpires, who themselves traveled from state to state to preside over the league’s games.5 These activities provided the basis for the Federals’ claim that organized baseball was engaged in interstate commerce and thus was subject to federal antitrust law. The Federal League argued that organized baseball had monopolized the supply of professional baseball players, preventing new leagues—such as its own—from vigorously competing with the established circuits. The complaint stated that all but three hundred of the nearly ten thousand professional players in the country were effectively “under the domination and control of the National Agreement . . . and the National Commission,” with mechanisms such as the reserve clause and blacklisting used to bind players to organized baseball from the time they signed their first professional contracts until the end of their careers.6 Moreover, the league asserted, these contracts...

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