Organizational Structure
MLB is governed by the Major League Baseball Constitution that has undergone several incarnations since 1875 with the most recent revisions being made in 2012. Under the direction of the Commissioner of Baseball (currently Bud Selig), Major League Baseball hires and maintains the sport's umpiring crews, and negotiates marketing, labor, and television contracts.
Major League Baseball maintains a unique, controlling relationship over the sport, including most aspects of minor league baseball. This is due in large part to a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, which held that baseball is not interstate commerce and therefore not subject to federal antitrust law. This ruling has been weakened only slightly in subsequent years.
Although there were several challenges to Major League Baseball's primacy in the sport between the 1870s and the Federal League in 1916, the last such challenge was the aborted Continental League in 1960.
Read more about this topic: Major League Baseball
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“The structure was designed by an old sea captain who believed that the world would end in a flood. He built a home in the traditional shape of the Ark, inverted, with the roof forming the hull of the proposed vessel. The builder expected that the deluge would cause the house to topple and then reverse itself, floating away on its roof until it should land on some new Ararat.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)