LAW-3390: Law & the Business of Baseball

Law and the Business of Baseball will explore the dynamic relationship baseball and law have enjoyed for more than 200 years. Baseball is a highly legalistic game which involves much more than just the two teams playing. Participants study the origins of the game and how the rules of baseball parallel statutes. A close examination is given the role attorneys have played in the formation of organized leagues and the roles they have played in labor management and as players. The course also examines the role of the Commissioner of Baseball, women in baseball, player salaries, franchise relocation's, fan safety, gambling, memorabilia, and youth baseball. Law and the Business of Baseball will strengthen the participants' understanding of such core subjects as civil procedure, constitutional law, property, torts, and ethics. Each year experts in the baseball and legal community speak to the class. Those guest speakers have included team owners, a league commissioner, chief legal counsels for baseball teams, the official historian for the National Baseball Hall of Fame, an attorney for the Major League Baseball Players Association, an attorney for Major League Baseball, a former major league baseball player who was a member of the 1969 New York Mets and was on the committee that helped select Marvin Miller as the MLBPA executive director, a former major league umpire who is also an attorney, the official scorer for the Minnesota Twins, a former Minnesota Twins batboy who is now attorney who discusses lawsuits regarding batboys, broadcasters, a baseball agent who is also an attorney and many attorney authors who have written baseball law related books. Each year, former Sports Illustrated writer Melissa Ludtke talks about her 1970s groundbreaking lawsuit against Major League Baseball that gave women equal rights to report from the locker room.