Peter Carfagna received his AB and JD from Harvard University ('75 and '79 respectively) and a law degree from Oxford
University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 2005 he became Senior Counsel at the Cleveland, Ohio, law firm of Calfee, Halter &
Griswold LLP. Prior to joining Calfee, he was Chief Legal Officer/General Counsel for for IMG Worldwide, Inc., a global sports
marketing company specializing in sports event planning and athlete representation.
"We're here today... because we love this game with all our heart," announces Peter Carfagna, "and there's a lot of
veritas to this game. There's a lot of truth." With these words, Mr. Carfagna sets out to discuss baseball's financial problems
that originated with Baltimore v. the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, a Supreme Court case in the 1920s examining the
economic aspect of baseball. The Court ruled that baseball was not actually about interstate commerce, but about personal effort, and
the sport was given an exemption from antitrust laws. This case was not overruled until 1998, when Congress passed the Curt Flood Act
recognizing baseball's big business status and stipulating that the antitrust exemption did not apply to issues surrounding player
employment. However, the 1998 act explicitly left undisturbed issues surrounding franchise relocation, thereby suggesting the
applicability of the antitrust exemption, in this area.
The team's continuing franchise relocation ability without antitrust scrutiny promotes a state of "indentured servitude
for seven years in the minor leagues" for players, explains Carfagna. They receive no leverage and no negotiating power until their
sixth year. Michael Lewis' acclaimed book, Moneyball, discusses the iniquities of the baseball marketplace, resulting in unjust
under-valuation for players in their middle years. "This," Carfagna says, "is the business or the economics of baseball. It's the game
within the game." It is a "new way of proceeding which the small market teams must examine in the absence of media contact and the
capacity to relocate the franchise."
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