Author: Peter Portero
Date: 3/11/06
Articles Category: Baseball Article
The MLB, or Major League Baseball, is the highest level of professional baseball in the world. The MLB operates the National League and the American League through a joint organization that has existed since 1903. Despite this, the MLB can effectively operate as a single league making it one of the major professional sport leagues in North America. The rules of the MLB are set by the Major League Baseball Constitution, which was established in 1876 as the National League Constitution and has undergone continuous revisions all the way up until a recent change in rules in 2005.
A single commissioner, currently Bud Selig, is in charge of hiring and maintaining the umpire crews as well as negotiating marketing, labor and television contracts. Unlike other major league sports in the United States, the MLB has a unique control over the sport of baseball itself including most of the aspects of minor league baseball. This was supported by a Supreme Court decision in 1922 in the case of Federal Baseball Club v. National League in which it was declared that baseball is not considered interstate commerce. This means the MLB is not subject to the federal antitrust law. However, despite this ruling the MLB still refers to itself as an industry rather than a sport.
The MLB has a special production and multimedia wing called MLB Advanced Media that is based out of New York. This wing is responsible for maintaining all thirty websites of the individual teams as well as the official MLB website. While the MLB Advanced Media wing is under the same ownership and revenue plan as the MLB they do hold their own editorial independence from the MLB. Another wing of the MLB is the MLB Productions, which is responsible for video and traditional broadcast media.
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