The Principle that Labour is Not a Commodity : What Can Be Learned from Professional Baseball in the United States and Japan?

The world’s two premier baseball leagues, Major League Baseball in the United States and Nippon Professional Baseball League in Japan, regulate the recruitment of players through player drafts, trades, free agency and contracting procedures. This article will examine these systems of labour regulation and the controls on labour in the context of the principle that ‘labour is not a commodity’. It is interesting that accepted labour practices in these two leagues such as drafting players and trading players without their consent clearly commodify labour but would be met with outrage if they were adopted in other industries. This article situates the labour practices of professional baseball within the literature on the principle that labour is not a commodity. It concludes by suggesting ways of de-commodifying labour and improving the treatment of players