The player who almost broke basball's antitrust exemption

Sportslaw History: The Player Who Almost
Broke Baseball's Antitrust Exemption

Danny Gardella's name will not grace the baseball hall of fame. During World War II, he played for the New York Giants because so many players were off fighting. After the war, his services no longer needed and the journeyman player went to Mexico to play. A number of players were lured by the more generous salaries paid by the Mexican leagues. But Baseball Commissioner, Albert B. "Happy" Chandler was not smiling. Although players like Gardella would not be missed in the major leagues, the owners feared that the Mexican league's higher salaries could ultimately attract better players and more of them.

In June 1946 Chandler announced that any U.S. player who had jumped to Mexico would be banned from the Major Leagues for five years. A year later, when faced with this suspension, Gardella filed suit in federal court, charging that Chandler, the Giants and the two leagues engaged in antitrust violations by the suspension and by the continued enforcement of the reserve clause, which commits players to remain with their team for as long as they played the game.

After the lower court rejected the claim, citing the 1922 Supreme Court ruling creating the exemption, the case was appealed. In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York concluded that the nature of the sport had changed and that antitrust law should apply. If it did, the actions of the commissioner and the owners in banning Mexican League players were would likely be illegal. Also, the standard players' agreement which prohibited players from becoming free agents would also be illegal. That is what the owners feared.

Ultimately the owners sought to settle with Gardella. After much thought, he dropped the suit in return for the owners' promise that he could play for the St. Louis Cardinals Gardella plus a cash settlement of $60,000. He gave half of that amount to Fred Johnson, his lawyer (who knew commissioner Chandler when they were together at Harvard Law School). As a Cardinal, he came to bat exactly one more time in a major league uniform. He flied out.

Gardella's attack on baseball's reserve clause came two decades before Curt Flood's more famous case, which ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.