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Major League Baseball, alone among industries of its size in the United States, operates as an unregulated monopoly. This 20th-century regulatory anomaly has become known as the baseball anomaly. Major League Baseball developed into a major commercial enterprise without being subject to antitrust liability. Long after the interstate commercial character of baseball had been established and even recognized by the Supreme Court, baseball's monopoly remained free from federal regulation. Duquette explains the baseball anomaly by connecting baseball's regulatory status to the larger political environment, tracing the game's fate through four different regulatory regimes. The constellation of institutional, ideological, and political factors within each regulatory regime provides the context for the survival of the baseball anomaly. Duquette shows baseball's unregulated monopoly persists because of the confluence of institutional, ideological, and political factors which have prevented the repeal of baseball's antitrust exemption to date. However, both the institutional and ideological factors are fading fast. Baseball's owners can no longer claim special cultural significance in defense of their exemption. Nor can they credibly claim that the commissioner system approximates government regulation effectively. Both of these strategies have been discredited by the labor unrest of the 1980s and 1990s. Duquette provides a unique perspective on American regulatory politics, and by explaining a complicated story in comprehensive prose, he has given researchers, policy makers, and fans a fascinating look at the business of baseball.
Szymanski and Zimbalist pay special attention to the rich and complex evolution of baseball from its beginnings in America, and they trace modern soccer from its foundation in England through its subsequent expansion across the world.
During the Civil War, Americans from homefront to battlefront played baseball as never before. While soldiers slaughtered each other over the country's fate, players and fans struggled over the form of the national pastime. George Kirsch gives us a color commentary of the growth and transformation of baseball during the Civil War. He shows that the game was a vital part of the lives of many a soldier and civilian--and that baseball's popularity had everything to do with surging American nationalism. By 1860, baseball was poised to emerge as the American sport. Clubs in northeastern and a few southern cities played various forms of the game. Newspapers published statistics, and governing bodies set rules. But the Civil War years proved crucial in securing the game's place in the American heart. Soldiers with bats in their rucksacks spread baseball to training camps, war prisons, and even front lines. As nationalist fervor heightened, baseball became patriotic. Fans honored it with the title of national pastime. War metaphors were commonplace in sports reporting, and charity games were scheduled. Decades later, Union general Abner Doubleday would be credited (wrongly) with baseball's invention. The Civil War period also saw key developments in the sport itself, including the spread of the New York-style of play, the advent of revised pitching rules, and the growth of commercialism. Kirsch recounts vivid stories of great players and describes soldiers playing ball to relieve boredom. He introduces entrepreneurs who preached the gospel of baseball, boosted female attendance, and found new ways to make money. We witness bitterly contested championships that enthralled whole cities. We watch African Americans embracing baseball despite official exclusion. And we see legends spring from the pens of early sportswriters. Rich with anecdotes and surprising facts, this narrative of baseball's coming-of-age reveals the remarkable extent to which America's national pastime is bound up with the country's defining event.
Baseball is much more than the national pastime. It has become an emblem of America itself. From its initial popularity in the mid-nineteenth century, the game has reflected national values and beliefs and promoted what it means to be an American. Stories abound that illustrate baseball's significance in eradicating racial barriers, bringing neighborhoods together, building civic pride, and creating on the field of play an instructive civics lesson for immigrants on the national character. In A People's History of Baseball, Mitchell Nathanson probes the less well-known but no less meaningful other side of baseball: episodes not involving equality, patriotism, heroism, and virtuous capitalism, but power--how it is obtained, and how it perpetuates itself. Through the growth and development of baseball Nathanson shows that, if only we choose to look for it, we can see the petty power struggles as well as the large and consequential ones that have likewise defined our nation. By offering a fresh perspective on the firmly embedded tales of baseball as America, a new and unexpected story emerges of both the game and what it represents. Exploring the founding of the National League, Nathanson focuses on the newer Americans who sought club ownership to promote their own social status in the increasingly closed caste of nineteenth-century America. His perspective on the rise and public rebuke of the Players Association shows that these baseball events reflect both the collective spirit of working and middle-class America in the mid-twentieth century as well as the countervailing forces that sought to beat back this emerging movement that threatened the status quo. And his take on baseball’s racial integration that began with Branch Rickey’s “Great Experiment” reveals the debilitating effects of the harsh double standard that resulted, requiring a black player to have unimpeachable character merely to take the field in a Major League game, a standard no white player was required to meet. Told with passion and occasional outrage, A People's History of Baseball challenges the perspective of the well-known, deeply entrenched, hyper-patriotic stories of baseball and offers an incisive alternative history of America's much-loved national pastime.
During the second half of the twentieth century, Major League Baseball and its affiliated minor leagues evolved from local and regional entities governing the play of America's favorite pastime to national business organizations. The relocation of teams, league expansion, the advent of free agency and an influx of international players has made baseball big business, on an increasingly global scale. Focusing on the last fifty years, this work examines the past and present commercial elements of organized baseball, emphasizing the dual roles--competitive sport and profitable business--which the sport must now fulfill. Twenty-five essays cover five areas integral to the economic side of baseball: business and finance, human resources, international relations, management and leadership and sports marketing. Detailed discussions of the redistribution of revenues, the history of player unionization, aggressive global marketing, strategies of franchise owners and an evaluation of fan costs, among other topics introduce the reader to the important issues and specific challenges professional baseball faces in an increasingly crowded--yet geographically expansive--sports marketplace. The work is also indexed.
The impact of antitrust law on sports is in the news all the time, especially when there is labor conflict between players and owners, or when a team wants to move to a new city. And if the majority of Americans have only the vaguest sense of what antitrust law is, most know one thing about it-that baseball is exempt. In The Baseball Trust, legal historian Stuart Banner illuminates the series of court rulings that resulted in one of the most curious features of our legal system-baseball's exemption from antitrust law. A serious baseball fan, Banner provides a thoroughly entertaining history of the game as seen through the prism of an extraordinary series of courtroom battles, ranging from 1890 to the present. The book looks at such pivotal cases as the 1922 Supreme Court case which held that federal antitrust laws did not apply to baseball; the 1972 Flood v. Kuhn decision that declared that baseball is exempt even from state antitrust laws; and several cases from the 1950s, one involving boxing and the other football, that made clear that the exemption is only for baseball, not for sports in general. Banner reveals that for all the well-documented foibles of major league owners, baseball has consistently received and followed antitrust advice from leading lawyers, shrewd legal advice that eventually won for baseball a protected legal status enjoyed by no other industry in America. As Banner tells this fascinating story, he also provides an important reminder of the path-dependent nature of the American legal system. At each step, judges and legislators made decisions that were perfectly sensible when considered one at a time, but that in total yielded an outcome-baseball's exemption from antitrust law-that makes no sense at all.
This book examines labour regulation and labour mobility in two professional baseball leagues: Major League Baseball in the United States and Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan. Through vivid comparative study, Matt Nichol explores how each league internally regulates labour mobility and how this internal regulation engages with external regulation from the legislature, statutory authorities and the courts. This comparison of two highly restrictive labour markets utilizes regulatory theory and labour regulation and suggests a framework for a global player transfer system in baseball.
Major League Baseball is experiencing a period of distinct uncertainty. Average game attendance has fallen since the 1994 strike. Congress has called into question baseball's presumed antitrust exemption. Broadcast rights disputes for popular teams have created complications for fans. However, new stadium facilities and, more important, the renewed excitement brought to the game by shattered batting records and the blazing pitchers of the late 90's brought fans back. A strike was narrowly averted at the end of the 2002 season, a campaign that yielded one of the most exciting post-seasons yet, with the unlikely Anaheim Angels claiming the coveted World Series trophy.Beneath these encouraging developments deep problems persist within Major League Baseball. Though a labor agreement was finally reached between players and owners, the specter of another dispute looms in the minds of fans. The new agreement, while a positive step, introduces several perverse incentives and will only make a modest dent in baseball's economic deformities. While Commissioner Bud Selig's proposal to eliminate two under-performing franchises was put on hold, the Players Association has agreed not to challenge an owner effort to contract two teams before the 2007 season. Beyond that, Selig himself has become the object of controversy, as questions regarding his possible conflicts of interest and poor leadership taint his reign over baseball. Disputes surrounding the establishment of regional sports networks, such as New York's YES network, make it more difficult and expensive for fans to watch their favorite teams. Tough questions about baseball's presumed special antitrust status have been raised by many, including an official Congressional inquiry.This book explores the abuses and inefficiencies in the functioning of the baseball industry and how these problems are directly connected to Major League Baseball's monopoly status, its presumed exemption from antitrust regulation, and public policy. Andrew Zimbalist, a noted sports economist, spares no criticism for baseball's current leadership. He asserts that the biggest problem for baseball remains the economic realities of its monopolistic practices. The absence of competitive pressure has bred arrogance, laxity, and inefficiency in Major League Baseball, according to Zimbalist. Among other recommendations, he argues that lifting the presumed exemption would allow government and judicial oversight, with an eye toward ending the abuses.May the Best Team Win provides a solid, hard-hitting analysis of the current state of America's pastime. Easily accessible and highly informative, it is bound to become a standard reference tool for fans seeking a deeper understanding of the important issues
Discusses baseball's history and the game's relationship to American society from the 1850s until the present day.