Baseball: Case Dismissed

• Share

If Milwaukee's Elmer W. Roller, 64, had it to do all over again, he might decide to be a baseball umpire instead of a circuit court judge. Umpires, at least, don't get their judgments reversed.

Last April, after digesting 7,000 pages of testimony and cogitating for 35 straight hours, Judge Roller ruled that the National League had violated Wisconsin's "little Sherman" antitrust law by moving the Milwaukee Braves to Atlanta, thereby "substantially restraining" Wisconsin's trade and commerce. He fined the ten-team league $55,000 and court costs, ordered it either to 1) bring the Braves back, or 2) give Milwaukee a new team. Last week, in a 4-3 decision, Wisconsin's Supreme Court overruled Roller and ordered him to dismiss the case.

Roller's decision, said the court, was contradictory and "inconsistent." Baseball might be a monopoly, but it is a nationwide monopoly; therefore Wisconsin is "powerless" to make the sport subject to its state antitrust law. Besides, continued the Supreme Court, to order the Braves back from Atlanta would be to correct one ill with another: "such an outcome would maintain a monopoly at the expense of Atlanta."

The decision makes Milwaukee (pop. 741,324) the only one among the country's dozen biggest cities that does not have either a big-league baseball team or a professional football team. Still, most doubtful about the value of the ruling may be Atlanta—which by now might be just as happy to give the Braves back. Picked as pennant contenders at season's start, the Braves last week lost their eighth game in nine starts, dropped into ninth place, behind the New York Mets.