Plaintiffs In Batsh*t MLB All Star Suit Forfeit The Game

It's marginally less humiliating than getting struck out for nine consecutive innings.

Yesterday the lobbying group suing Major League Baseball to get the All Star game moved back to Atlanta voluntarily dismissed its case after getting absolutely pantsed at a hearing on their motion for a preliminary injunction. Conveniently, this allowed the plaintiff to claim with a straight face that no court has ever reached the merits of its bizarre theory that MLB is literally the government thanks to municipally sponsored stadiums where its member teams play.

Ditto for the even weirder argument put forth in court by Kraken attorney Howard Kleinhendler that MLB was imposing an illegal pre-clearance requirement on voting laws by moving a single game to protest Georgia’s election laws.

“It’s important to understand that JCN lost this motion on standing,” said Alfredo Ortiz, CEO of the Job Creators Network at a hastily convened press conference near the courthouse as the dismissal was hitting the docket. “MLB didn’t win it on the merits.’

Which is all well and good, except that those of us who listened to the entirety of that two-hour cringefest heard U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni say, “Assume that you’re going to lose that argument,” after informing Kleinhendler “That’s not what that case holds. That case is entirely distinguishable,” and batting away his vociferously argued but wildly misconstrued precedents. (Indeed, we’d assumed as much since the day this floater landed on the docket.)

In announcing her ruling from the bench, Judge Caproni warned the plaintiffs “I would be remiss if I did not point out several other issues with this case. To say that the legal underpinnings of this lawsuit are weak and muddled would be an understatement.”

But Ortiz, wasn’t about to be cancel cultured by a little thing like objective reality. First he excoriated Democrats Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff for being “shamelessly silent” about the MLB’s move, despite the reality that both senators spoke out against boycotts of the state.

Then he launched into a mathematically illiterate colloquy on the economic impact of moving the game.

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“Some in the press and even the courts have said that the MLB pulling the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver is a zero-sum game since the game is still being played somewhere just not in Atlanta,” he said, before invoking various caterers and limo drivers in Atlanta who will lose out on business thanks to the MLB’s decision. He failed to mention the limo drivers in Denver, who will presumably pick up that business now that the All Star Game is being played in their back yard.

Nor did Ortiz mention that the game is zero-sum for him personally, since he gets paid the same either way. As Law & Crime points out, his shop was founded by Republican mega-donor Bernie Marcus, the Home Depot founder, and receives support from the Mercer family, backers of countless conservative media and lobbying outlets. In 2019, Ortiz took home $530,000 for a reported 20 hours a week of work erecting troll billboards — so he definitely knows the pain of small businesses owners.

After last week’s courtroom disaster, he promised to “appeal our case to the Second Circuit or directly to the Supreme Court.” And Ortiz continued in the same vein yesterday, vowing to “continue to evaluate our legal options and other out of court opportunities.”

KA-CHING. Well, not for the businesses his shop is “helping,” of course. But for Ortiz himself, the opportunities are endless.

 Job Creators Network v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball [Docket via Court Listener]

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Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.