Preseason Rhubarb

Calling them as it sees them, the U.S. Supreme Court has touched off a lot of judicial rhubarbs during the last three decades by trying to decide whether the monopolistic foundations of professional sports make them liable to prosecution under the federal antitrust laws.

Most of the argument swirled around the "reserve clause," a device basic to baseball and other big-time professional sports. It gives the owner complete control over the career of an athlete, who is no less an article of barter than a bale of hay. The owners' case for the reserve clause is that it prevents wealthy owners from monopolizing all the best talent and thereby ruining the game as well as the gate. In 1922, and again in 1953, the Supreme Court, to the delight of the owners, ruled that baseball is a sport, not a business, and hence does not come under the federal antitrust laws. Last week the Supreme Court turned about.

The court ruled 6-3 that professional football, a brother to pro baseball, falls under the antitrust laws. The man who moved the court was a big (255 lbs.), broad former Detroit Lions guard named Bill Radovich, who had charged that pro footballers had illegally conspired to bar him from the game by means of the reserve clause. The court did not rule on the details of Radovich's complaint. Instead of throwing his appeal out of court, as it did in the past baseball cases, it ordered a lower court to hold trial on his charges. This opened the door to all pro footballers who care to attack the reserve clause. More important, Justice Tom C. Clark's majority opinion went on to say that if the present Justices were considering baseball for the first time, they would undoubtedly find baseball to be business. Clark, in fact, suggested that, to clarify the whole situation, Congress might want to write legislation specifying that baseball is business.

Two Congressmen responded with bills tagging baseball a business subject to antitrust laws, but a third moved in with a counterproposal to exempt all the big-league games--baseball, football, hockey and basketball--from the antitrust laws. Even in the warm sunshine of the training camps, baseball owners shivered to think of the possible consequences of the Supreme Court's call--a state of affairs in which each freely enterprising male with a talent for fielding, flinging or flailing a baseball can sell his prowess to the highest bidder each season. But not all shared their plaint that this would mean the doom of professional sports. "I'm not out to wreck football or sports," explained Old Pro Radovich, ready for court battle to collect $105,000 in damages. "I put 22 years in the game. But I don't like to have a man tell me that I could play for one club and nobody else."

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