In 1975, a Major League Baseball clause that kept players legally tied to their teams after retirement was dismantled, creating the modern concept of free agency.

The MLB's reserve clause gave owners rights to players after their contracts expired

The clause was added to contracts in 1879, allowing owners to hang on to players after the expiration of their contracts, sometimes in perpetuity.

Major League Baseball, explained

Major League Baseball is America’s oldest professional sports league. Alongside triumphs, the league has faced scandals, including drug abuse and steroid use, shaping its path over the decades. Today, MLB embraces new rules, international talent, and a growing connection to legalized sports betting.

Minor leaguers once unionized for better pay, housing, and medical care

For decades, Minor League baseball players endured overcrowded housing, indifferent medical care, and all-night bus rides for a chance to make it to “The Show.” And they did it for as little as $4,800 a year.

Before 1920, during the Deadball Era, a single baseball was used throughout a Major League game, leading to a notoriously dirty style of play.

MLB 2023 rules changes were the most dramatic alterations in decades, drastically speeding up the game.

The first MLB All-Star Game was designed by a sports journalist who believed the spectacle would boost baseball's reputation during the Great Depression.

How baseball shaped Black America during Reconstruction

A cornerstone of the budding Black culture following the Civil War was baseball, with several clubs springing up in Black neighborhoods and leaders like Frederick Douglass cheering on the players, including his son, who played for a team in Washington. This detailed history of the early Black leagues unpacks how the game enhanced the upwardly mobile community—and why that fact led to the segregation of what would become Major League Baseball.

The 2026 MLB season is the first to allow players to challenge umpires' calls on balls and strikes.

Despite being completely legal to discuss salaries with your coworkers, the practice largely remains taboo in the US, particularly amongst older workers.

Pay transparency—once considered taboo—is gaining momentum. Despite being legally protected since 1935, open salary discussions have only recently become more common, especially among younger workers. This overview explores how cultural norms, economic shifts, and new state laws are reshaping the conversation around what we earn.

Jackie Robinson's iconic 42 is the only number that's been retired leaguewide, meaning no current players can wear it except in his honor.

For years, Black players were tacitly banned from professional football leagues

In 1902, Charles Follis was the first Black player to play in a professional football game, and Black players were allowed in years after other leagues banned them. A "gentleman’s agreement” led to the league banning Black players in 1933, until four Black men reintegrated pro football in 1946.

The National Labor Relations Act gave workers the right to unionize in the US.

Hear an interview with Harvard Law School employee and labor law expert Sharon Block about how the parallel motivations of workers, employers, and government officials led to the creation of the National Labor Relations Act.

Visualize how changes to lineups, driven by modern analytics, could have changed one of MLB's most iconic moments.

In 2024, the league signed a 11-year deal with Disney, Amazon, and NBC Universal

The $2.2B deal was widely applauded in the media, but the Players Association questioned how the NBA arrived at the valuation and why the deal gives players less than 10% of total revenue compared to the NBA’s 50%.

A 1930s card game birthed modern fantasy sports

"National Pastime" used the statistics of real Major League Baseball players to determine a winner, creating the template for the modern fantasy sports model.

Each July 1, six-time Major League Baseball All-Star Bobby Bonilla gets $1.19M from the New York Mets, thanks to a 25-year-long deferred payment agreement.

Explaining the rise in adult sports leagues

Community sports leagues shifted from publicly supported entities to privatized ones in the 1990s, as tech advances streamlined registration processes. Millennial interest drove significant growth in social sports leagues for adults, growing much faster than other kinds of sports. A few industry leaders have benefited from this shift.

A new logo helped the NBA stay relevant in the '70s

In 1967, the American Basketball Association was formed, featuring a flashier style of offense. The competition caused player salaries to rise in both leagues. After watching Major League Baseball unveil its new logo, the NBA decided to use the same designer to create an iconic logo for the league. It debuted in 1971 and reignited basketball fans' interest.

Some say baseball's drug problem goes back to the late 1800s

At age 32, pitcher James “Pud” Galvin was feeling tired and decided to take "the Brown-Séquard elixir," which contained a testicular fluid from dogs and guinea pigs, believed to invigorate tired bodies. It might've worked: Galvin pitched a two-hit shutout the next day.

MLB pitchers were charged with benefiting from sports betting

In November 2025, two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians were charged with coordinating with sports bettors to enrich themselves and others. In many instances, they shared the kinds of pitches they would throw at specific points in the game. Bettors then placed money on those actions.

Fantasy sports' roots go back to an 1860s parlor game that simulated real-world baseball.

The MLB consist of 30 teams

The league is home to the National and American leagues, which include 780 active players. The MLB season is the longest in professional sports, with 162 games played during the regular season, typically from April through September, ending with the World Series championship in October.

The Open Era redefined both men's and women's tennis

The early days of modern tennis were largely enjoyed by the upper class, who had money for lawns to play on. More often than not, the best players competed for the love of the game, not money. This led to Grand Slams limiting the competitions to amateur athletes. Things changed in 1968, considered the start of the Open Era, when professional players were permitted to play.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

The NBA, explained

From humble beginnings in 1891, basketball transformed into the global juggernaut we know today. The NBA, established in 1949 and later revitalized by Commissioner David Stern in the 1980s, became a model for sports branding, player marketing, and international expansion.

Read about the history of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the first law to ban monopolistic behavior

In its later years, Standard Oil formed a business trust that reflected the company's exponential growth. Politicians wanted to prevent such trusts and used the Sherman Antitrust Act to force Standard Oil to break up.

Inside MLB's robo-umping experiment

Human umpires call roughly 94% of pitches right overall, but performance reduces on borderline pitches in high-leverage moments, the calls that shape game outcomes most. A professor and historian analyze early experiments with the full "robot ump" system that helped shape MLB's decision to implement a compromise "challenge" system.

A 1948 Supreme Court ruling realigned the film industry

1948's landmark United States v. Paramount Pictures found that the "Big Five" studios violated antitrust laws, effectively ending the reign of the vertically integrated system and the golden age of Hollywood.

The 1919 Chicago White Sox, later known as the 'Black Sox,' were banned from baseball for fixing that year's World Series despite being acquitted in court.

The Fair Labor Standards Act, a 1938 law guaranteeing time off for full-time employees, led to the modern vacation.

In 1936, the federal government passed the Robinson-Patman Act, an antitrust law initially aimed at breaking up the power of the grocery store chain A&P.

Modern antitrust law was created to combat the Standard Oil Trust

John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust enabled him to evade laws against a single corporation buying stock in another. His centralized board of directors held stock in many different oil companies under his control, allowing Rockefeller to eventually monopolize the oil refining industry. Efforts to regulate and prevent the Standard Oil Trust's monopoly became known as "antitrust" laws.

Sports leagues have attempted to prevent athletes from betting

As pro and collegiate sports embrace betting (and the revenue that comes with it), each league works diligently to ensure the integrity of the games by hiring private firms to analyze irregular bets. These companies have flagged bets that led to the firing of Alabama’s baseball coach, the suspension of multiple athletes at Iowa and Iowa State, and, most recently, a lifetime ban on former Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter by the NBA in April 2024.

A part-owner of the Oakland Raiders spearheaded the first fantasy football league.

NBA players are the best paid athletes in major US sports

The NFL is the most valuable pro league in the world, but its players aren’t making nearly as much as NBA players. This CNBC video dives into how league structure, salary cap, and guaranteed contracts define how much an athlete will make, and shows how NBA players are able to use those to get almost double the average annual salary of other pro leagues.

With roots stretching back to the 18th century, unions have long been at the center of change in labor rights.

National Hockey League, explained

Founded in 1917, the NHL started with four Canadian teams and now spans 32 franchises across North America. Its iconic Stanley Cup, first awarded in 1893, remains a unique prize, with winners' names hand-engraved each year. The league generates billions in annual revenue, aided by key expansions, lucrative TV deals, and global fan engagement. While player safety and labor disputes have posed challenges, the NHL remains a cornerstone of professional sports, offering an 82-game season culminating in the fiercely contested Stanley Cup Final.

Pete Rozelle made football an American obsession

There have been eight NFL commissioners in the league’s 100-plus year history, but none of them changed the league quite like Pete Rozelle. This 1984 New York Times Magazine profile looks back at the substantial changes Rozelle brought to the league since he took the job in 1960, as well as the challenges he faced while in office.

'The Star-Spangled Banner' became associated with sports at the 1918 World Series thanks to an impromptu rendition during the 7th inning stretch.

130,000 working musicians once went on strike

The early days of the record industry looked much different than they do now. There were few national record labels and there were organized musicians who viewed themselves more as day laborers rather than artists. That allowed for an organized strike by the American Federation of Musicians.

Sabermetrics, the empirical analysis of baseball statistics made famous by 'Moneyball,' redefined how people evaluate baseball players, overturning a century of assumptions about which metrics matter most.

Rivalry between the AFL and NFL led to a merger—and the creation of the Super Bowl

Competition between the American Football League and the National Football League led to a 1966 merger agreement, with the Super Bowl created as a championship game to determine league supremacy before the two leagues were fully integrated.

NHL players used to not wear helmets or masks

Until the 1970s, hockey goalies didn't wear masks to protect their faces with any regularity. Instead, they took pucks off their cheeks, foreheads, and mouths, resulting in serious scars. Any player who entered the league after June 1, 1979, was required to wear a helmet, but several players who'd started before then chose to continue playing without one.

Why ‘Shoeless Joe’ Jackson was banned from Major League Baseball

Few baseball stars are more infamous than "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, one of the game's greatest hitters. Jackson was part of the Chicago White Sox team (notoriously dubbed the "Black Sox") accused of fixing the 1919 World Series. This resource breaks down the criminal trial that investigated those allegations. Curiously, Jackson and his teammates were acquitted, but Major League Baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis still banned them from the league for life.

Walter Camp revolutionized American Football

When Walter Camp was introduced to the game of football in the late 1800s, the rules weren’t set, the field wasn’t uniform, and the game was brutal. Camp joined early rules committees and was instrumental in shaping the modern game. Read this deep dive into Camp’s early life and influences, and find out how he established the line of scrimmage and the series of downs.

100 moments that shaped baseball history

Published in 2018 by baseball historian Jacob Kornhauser, this list examines the defining moments throughout more than a century of play on the field, from Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis purportedly throwing a no-hitter while on acid to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier.

How fantasy baseball fights the loneliness epidemic

Experts believe the erosion of traditional community organizations has led to a loneliness epidemic. This deep dive explores how fantasy baseball has filled the gap for some men, providing a stand-in social network.

A history of the rare, chaotic moments when MLB batters charge the pitcher on the mound

They typically occur when a pitcher has slung a pitch a little too close to the batter—though the exact causes vary, from quick tempers to longstanding grudges. No definitive account of these infrequent but highly visible incidents has existed, so sportswriter Jon Bois compiled data on 264 such moments between 1950 and 2025. The resulting 23-minute video explores the rich narratives leading to these charged events.

The inventor of fantasy football first experimented with two other sports

In the mid-1950s, Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach, a part-owner of the Oakland Raiders, concocted two fantasy sports games: one for Major League Baseball and one for the Professional Golfers’ Association. In 1962, he invented fantasy football alongside two writers from the Oakland Tribune.

Teddy Roosevelt's intervention helped save football, which previously had been a brutally violent game.