Joe Nocera, Columnist

Baseball Deserves to Lose Its Antitrust Immunity

But not because of politics. The exemption has never made any sense.

April 7, 2021 at 3:05 PM UTC

Joe Nocera is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. He is the host and writer of the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."

Fans wouldn’t notice much difference.
Photographer: Patrick Smith/Getty Images

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When Major League Baseball decided to move the midseason All-Star game out of Atlanta to protest a new Georgia law that restricts voting, Republican congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina quickly tweeted an idea for how to retaliate:

Other Republicans, including Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, agreed. “Why does @MLB still have antitrust immunity?” Lee asked.