## Facts

- Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. operated the Baltimore Terrapins, a member club of the Federal League, formed to compete with the National and American Leagues.
- Baltimore alleged the National and American Leagues, their officials, and others conspired to monopolize the business of professional baseball.
- The alleged scheme included buying out certain Federal League clubs and inducing other clubs (except Baltimore) to leave, leading to the Federal League’s collapse.
- Baltimore claimed it suffered substantial losses when it was left without comparable compensation after the rival league was dismantled.
- The organization of professional baseball required teams and players to travel across state lines to play scheduled games in different cities.

## Issues

1. Whether organizing and operating professional baseball leagues, including regular interstate travel for games, constitutes “trade or commerce among the several States” under the Sherman Act.
2. If not interstate commerce, whether a treble-damages action under the federal antitrust laws could be maintained for the alleged conspiracy to monopolize professional baseball.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed judgment for the defendants.
- The Court held that the business of providing public baseball games for profit was not interstate commerce.
- Interstate travel by teams and players was treated as incidental to the exhibitions and did not convert the exhibitions into commerce among the states.
- Because the conduct was outside the Sherman Act’s reach, the treble-damages antitrust claim failed, and the Court did not reach other antitrust questions.

## Legal Principles

- Public exhibitions of professional baseball games are treated as intrastate affairs for purposes of the Sherman Act, even when teams regularly cross state lines to play.
- Interstate transportation that merely enables a local exhibition does not, by itself, transform the underlying business into interstate commerce.
- When the challenged activity is not “trade or commerce among the several States,” federal antitrust remedies such as treble damages are unavailable.

## Conclusion

The Court concluded that professional baseball, characterized as the business of staging local exhibitions for paying spectators, was not interstate commerce; therefore, federal antitrust law did not provide a treble-damages remedy for the alleged conspiracy against the Federal League club.


Fed. Baseball Club of Balt., Inc. v. Nat’l League of Prof’l Baseball Clubs, 259 U.S. 200 (1922)