EDITOR’S FOREWORD: RAPID CHANGE ALONGSIDE PERENNIAL THINGS

Written by Dan Lawton
Editor-in-Chief

If you’re a baseball fan, you know that five major league clubs call California home. One is the reigning World Series champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who once employed a pitcher, Andy Messersmith. Andy had the temerity to sue Major League Baseball over its reserve clause. Its innocuous label masked its feudal reality. It bound every player, however skilled, to his club, even after his contact expired. It forbade the player from demanding a trade or signing a contract with another club except at the pleasure of his owner-masters. To the shock and surprise of the baseball world, Andy won his case, clearing the way for free agency. From Andy to Shohei Ohtani, you know the rest of the story—an economic revolution, for better or for worse, in which players made more money than ever. In December 2025, Andy and his family will celebrate the 50th anniversary of that singular moment in baseball’s legal and economic history. It wouldn’t have happened without him daring to turn the rules of the system upside down and taking on the Goliath that insisted that it, and only it, knew what was best for the game and its players and fans.

Today, I wonder what Andy would have thought of artificial intelligence had he been a lawyer instead of a beloved Dodger, a popular teammate, and a legal hero to his colleagues. In 1974, he had this to say about statistics: "Statistics are overrated. Championships are won in the clubhouse."

Re-reading that quote today reminds me of friends and colleagues at the long-gone law firm where I started my career. Whether we won or lost that given day, the place felt like a clubhouse.