Siegfried at bat: Mudville revisited
| Author | Jesse W. Markham,Paul V. Teplitz |
| DOI | 10.1177/0003603X8302800308 |
| Published date | 01 September 1983 |
| Date | 01 September 1983 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Antitrust Bulletin/Fall 1983
Siegfried at bat: Mudville revisited
By Jesse
W.
Markham
and
Paul
V.
Teplitz
791
Our
problem with Siegfried's review is
that
it reveals a great deal
more
about
Siegfried
than
about the contents
of
our book. He
makes obvious at the outset his disposition to prejudge the study
figuratively by its cover. As he puts it, because the study was
undertaken in response to initiatives taken by the office
of
the
Commissioner
of
Baseball, it perforce is
"a
brief for the baseball
owners," acharge to which we "readily confess" in our foreword.
Siegfried is not simply confused on this point, he is confusing.
Not
only did we not write the foreword (this was written by
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn), but we surely did not regard
our
factual description
of
the events that precipitated the study, the
nature
of
the fieldwork undertaken,
and
the
data
sources made
available to us, as set forth in our preface
and
introductory
chapter, as a "confession."
Siegfried's dark suspicions aside, we wish to clarify the
matter.
If
we slanted
our
findings to serve the interests
of
the club
owners, we failed to fulfill the purpose
of
the venture as broadly
outlined by the Commissioner's office. The several economic
studies
of
major
league sports, eight
of
which we cited at some
length (pp. 33; 113-14),
had
reached opposite conclusions on the
amenability
of
professional sports to governance by antitrust
policy as applied to conventional business enterprise. Commis-
sioner Kuhn, an experienced antitrust
and
labor relations attor-
ney, suspected
that
these conflicting policy conclusions were
largely attributable
to
imperfect knowledge concerning the in-
herent nature
of
professional league sports generally,
and
to
the
©1984by Federal LegalPublications, Inc.
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