By Walter T. Champion, Jr.
In my case book, I begin with an Introduction that includes James Earl Jones’ speech from the Field of Dreams: “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers; it’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. Ray, it reminds us of all that once was good and could be again.” The point is, sports in America is different; and sports law is different. What makes it so different? As the eminent French philosopher/historian, Jacques Barzun, said, “whoever wants to know the hearts and minds of America had better learn baseball.”
These days, I give everyone a piece of paper and ask them to write down where Andorra is? And then I read the answers, which are usually pretty funny [it’s a tiny country in the Pyrenees between France and Spain]. Baseball agent Randy Hendricks signed Cuban baseball defector, and left-handed pitcher, Arvoldis Chapman, to a $30 million dollar, six-year contract with the Cincinnati Reds. Chapman defected while the Cuban National Team was playing in the Netherlands. But why Andorra? Because there is a loop-hole in the MLB and INS rules that if a Cuban baseball defector goes directly to the U.S. then he’ll be placed in the amateur draft; however, if he goes to a second country (usually the Bahamas), he’ll be a free agent and able to sell his services to the highest bidder.
Remember, he is uncontested in the professional ranks, but he consistently throws in the 100 mile range. I coined a phrase, “juice,” which is the ability to write your own ticket, based on unusual skills. Michael Jordan had Juice; Bobby Nobody, a 5’ 9”, 180 lbs., 4.6 in the 40, db from Slippery Rock has No Juice. The SPK (Standard Players’ Contract) for him would be a contract of adhesion. This may also give the teacher an opportunity to jog across the room and indicate that it’s a 4.9, the same time Maurice Clarett ran in the 2005 combine and he was a tailback! Jerry Argovitz, the former owner of the USFL Houston Gamblers, expanded the concept of Juice when he gave quarterback Jim Kelly an escalator clause which guaranteed that he always would be paid in the top three at his position of USFL players; Kelly also received a new, leased Corvette every month.
The huge salaries certainly make Sports Law different; but, there are also certain contract clauses that are unique, such as the morality clause, or the best interests of baseball clause, or the clause in basketball contracts which precludes the players from engaging in sports that are deemed to be potentially harmful, in the off-season. This would be the perfect time to throw 81,000 in one-dollar bills up in the air (a stack of monopoly money will serve the same purpose) and remind the class of the sad saga of Pacman Jones who did just that at 4:00 a.m. in a strip club in Las Vegas, and then wanted the 40 girls to return the money. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Pacman for the 2007 season without pay (even before he was charged with anything).
During the first class, it is imperative to mention the Supreme Court case of Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U.S. 258 (1972). It’s not really a case per se, it’s more like a happening. I usually ask if there are any thespians, who could read theatrically the various poems. Of course, the most stunning part of the opinion is the list of 83 “names, celebrated for one reason or another, that have sparked the diamond and its environs that have provided tinder for recaptured thrills, for reminiscence and comparisons, and for conversation and anticipation in-season and off-season.” The list begins with notables such as Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth but soon digresses to lesser lights such as Amos Rusie, Bill Wambsganss, Stuffy McInnis, and Old Hoss Radbourne. In 1972, Justice Blackman was junior in status and about to write his first major opinion, Roe v. Wade; his colleagues were highly impressed with the late hours he spent in the Supreme Court Library, ruminating on the legal boundaries of abortion ( or so they thought). Whereas, in reality, he was skowering the Encyclopedia of Baseball to compile statistical averages that would anoint the player for inclusion in the list. Justice Thurgood Marshall wondered why there were not any African-American ballplayers in the list; Blackmun demurred and said that the list was pre-1950, which was exactly Marshall’s point. Marshall intimated that if this error was corrected he might vote with the majority. So, Blackmun conceded the point and added Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Satchel Paige. But , Justice Marshall voted with the minority anyhow, and wrote his own dissent.
Flood v. Kuhn is a good way to end the first lecture. I usually bring with me my autographed, framed photograph of James Earl Jones, and sometimes try to emulate Darth Vader. I also usually mention John Rocker and Steve Howe somewhere, and close with a preview of Philadelphia Ball Club v. Lajoie, 51 A. 973 (Pa. 1902): Napoleon Lajoie’s “services: are of such a unique character…as renders them of peculiar value…and so difficult of substitution that their loss will produce ‘irreparable injury’.”
Walter Champion is the George Foreman Professor of Sports and Entertainment Law and the Director of the George Foreman Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at Texas Southern University School of Law. He also is an adjunct Professor at the University of Houston School of Law and is teaching Sports Law there in the second summer session of 2010. He is the author of Sports Law in a Nutshell (West, 2009), Fundamentals of Sports Law (West, 2d ed., 2004; ann.cum. supp., 2010), and Sports Law: Cases, Documents, and Materials (Aspen, 2005). He can be reached at: wchampion@tmslaw.tsu.edu.
