Talk:Reserve clause

Slavery

"In the 1960s, things began to change. Players, by now many of them members of minority groups, began to see the reserve clause as a virtual form of involuntary servitude—slavery."

Really? Isn't this is a bit of a leap? Was there really a conscious connection between the American civil rights movement and free agency? I really think this isn't NPoV but I'm not sure how. Wencer 20:35, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree — it sounds at the very least like original research, and at best a vast oversimplification of the road that led to free agency. I've removed the offending sentence. —Cleared as filed. 20:44, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Article Inaccurate

Baseball is the only sport held to be exempt from the anti-trust laws. Football, hockey, etc., are not. This needs clarifying and correcting in the article.

The article also reflects a misunderstanding of how the reserve clause operated. Typically, the player signed a one-year contract. Under the contract, the team "reserved" the right to require the player to play for one additional year, at a salary equal to not less than 90% nor more than 125% of the previous year's salary. With this sort of provision in place, most players signed another contract for the next year, which, of course, also contained a reserve clause, so, in that sense, the contract went on forever.

Messersmith, et al., however, decided NOT to sign a contract for the next year. They merely played another year, pursuant to the terms of the old contract. When that additional year expired, they contended that they were free. The matter was submitted to binding arbitration, and the neutral arbitrator ruled in their favor. In my mind, that was always the proper construction of the reserve clause, but no player, to my knowledge, had ever approached it in that manner.

John Paul Parks (talk) 04:21, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

This is not correct. Everyone - owners and players - had assumed until the Messersmith case that the clause meant that if the player didn't sign a new contract but continued to play (or not play) under the terms of the previous contract, these terms implicitly included the reserve clause itself. The reason the arbitrator ruled for the players was that the clause was ambiguous, and when the language of a contract is ambiguous, the ruling is supposed to go against the side that drew up the ambiguous language (the owners in this case). But in any case, the article must be changed to as to not give the impression that players simply wanted to not have to give up a year; everyone assumed that players were trapped for life. Erniecohen (talk) 18:01, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Flood's career

"Flood sacrificed the remainder of his playing career to pursue this litigation"

Curt Flood did return to Major League baseball following the conclusion of the case. He played with Washington briefly before deciding to retire. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.212.97.17 (talk) 16:23, 2 November 2011 (UTC)