Sport: Baseball at the Bar

The men who run baseball had more to worry about last week than who would play second base. Three black-robed U.S. Court of Appeals judges, sitting in as umpires on a $300,000 damage suit, prepared to call a play that could really hurt. In effect, baseball was told that its player contracts might be violating the U.S. antitrust laws and making "peons" out of professional ballplayers at the same time. Since baseball had been writing the same kind of contract for two generations, it was a little like being told, after years of married life, that the wedding wasn't legal after...