Never Just a Game

Never Just a Game
Author: Robert F. Burk
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2001-03-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780807849613

America's national pastime has been marked from its inception by bitter struggles between owners and players over profit, power, and prestige. In this book, the first installment of a highly readable, comprehensive labor history of baseball, Robert Burk d

Much More Than a Game

Much More Than a Game
Author: Robert F. Burk
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2003-01-14
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0807875376

To most Americans, baseball is just a sport; but to those who own baseball teams--and those who play on them--our national pastime is much more than a game. In this book, Robert Burk traces the turbulent labor history of American baseball since 1921. His comprehensive, readable account details the many battles between owners and players that irrevocably altered the business of baseball. During what Burk calls baseball's "paternalistic era," from 1921 to the early 1960s, the sport's management rigidly maintained a system of racial segregation, established a network of southern-based farm teams that served as a captive source of cheap replacement labor, and crushed any attempts by players to create collective bargaining institutions. In the 1960s, however, the paternal order crumbled, eroded in part by the civil rights movement and the competition of television. As a consequence, in the "inflationary era" that followed, both players and umpires established effective unions that successfully pressed for higher pay, pensions, and greater occupational mobility--and then fought increasingly bitter struggles to hold on to these hard-won gains.

The Lords of the Realm

The Lords of the Realm
Author: John Helyar
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2011-07-27
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 030780142X

"The ultimate chronicle of the games behind the game."—The New York Times Book Review Baseball has always inspired rhapsodic elegies on the glory of man and golden memories of wonderful times. But what you see on the field is only half the game. In this fascinating, colorful chronicle—based on hundreds of interviews and years of research and digging—John Helyar brings to vivid life the extraordinary people and dramatic events that shaped America's favorite pastime, from the dead-ball days at the turn of the century through the great strike of 1994. Witness zealous Judge Landis banish eight players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, after the infamous "Black Sox" scandal; the flamboyant A's owner Charlie Finley wheel and deal his star players, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers, like a deck of cards; the hysterical bidding war of coveted free agent Catfish Hunter; the chain-smoking romantic, A. Bartlett Giamatti, locking horns with Pete Rose during his gambling days of summer; and much more. Praise for The Lords of the Realm "A must-read for baseball fans . . . reads like a suspense novel."—Kirkus Reviews "Refreshingly hard-headed . . . the only book you'll need to read on the subject."—Newsday "Lots of stories . . . well told, amusing . . . edifying."—The Washington Post

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2004-03-17
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0393066231

Michael Lewis’s instant classic may be “the most influential book on sports ever written” (People), but “you need know absolutely nothing about baseball to appreciate the wit, snap, economy and incisiveness of [Lewis’s] thoughts about it” (Janet Maslin, New York Times). One of GQ's 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism of the 21st Century Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone—but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only “the single most influential baseball book ever” (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what “may be the best book ever written on business” (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places—the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players—but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors. What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

Leveling the Playing Field

Leveling the Playing Field
Author: Paul C. Weiler
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0674045025

The world of sports seems entwined with lawsuits. This is so, Paul Weiler explains, because of two characteristics intrinsic to all competitive sports. First, sporting contests lose their drama if the competition becomes too lopsided. Second, the winning athletes and teams usually take the "lion's share" of both fan attention and spending. So interest in second-rate teams and in second-rate leagues rapidly wanes, leaving one dominant league with monopoly power. The ideal of evenly balanced sporting contests is continually challenged by economic, social, and technological forces. Consequently, Weiler argues, the law is essential to level the playing field for players, owners, and ultimately fans and taxpayers. For example, he shows why players' use of performance-enhancing drugs, even legal ones, should be treated as a more serious offense than, say, use of cocaine. He also explains why proposals to break up dominant leagues and create new ones will not work, and thus why both union representation of players and legal protection for fans--and taxpayers--are necessary. Using well-known incidents--and supplying little-known facts--Weiler analyzes a wide array of moral and economic issues that arise in all competitive sports. He tells us, for example, how Commissioner Bud Selig should respond to Pete Rose's quest for admission to the Hall of Fame; what kind of settlement will allow baseball players and owners to avoid a replay of their past labor battles; and how our political leaders should address the recent wave of taxpayer-built stadiums.

Baseball's Great Experiment

Baseball's Great Experiment
Author: Jules Tygiel
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 452
Release: 1997
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780195106206

Offers a history of African American exclusion from baseball, and assesses the changing racial attitudes that led up to Jackie Robinson's acceptance by the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Baseball Economist

The Baseball Economist
Author: J.C. Bradbury
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2008-02-26
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780452289024

Freakonomics meets Moneyball in this provocative exposé of baseball’s most fiercely debated controversies and some of its oldest, most dearly held myths. Providing far more than a mere collection of numbers, economics professor and popular blogger J.C. Bradbury shines the light of his economic thinking on baseball, exposing the power of tradeoffs, competition, and incentives. Utilizing his own “sabernomic” approach, Bradbury dissects baseball topics such as: • Did steroids have nothing to do with the recent homerun records? Incredibly, Bradbury’s research reveals steroids probably had little impact. • Which players are ridiculously overvalued? Bradbury lists all players by team with their revenue value to the team listed in dollars—including a dishonor role of those players with negative values—updated in paperback to include the 2007 season. • Does it help to lobby for balls and strikes? Statistics alone aren’t enough anymore. This is a refreshing, lucid, and powerful read for fans, fantasy buffs, and players—as well as coaches at all levels—who want to know what is really happening on the field.

The Ideal Team Player

The Ideal Team Player
Author: Patrick M. Lencioni
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2016-04-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1119209617

In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player. In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues. Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.

Black Baseball, 1858-1900

Black Baseball, 1858-1900
Author: James E. Brunson III
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 1402
Release: 2019-03-22
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1476616582

This is one of the most important baseball books to be published in a long time, taking a comprehensive look at black participation in the national pastime from 1858 through 1900. It provides team rosters and team histories, player biographies, a list of umpires and games they officiated and information on team managers and team secretaries. Well known organizations like the Washington's Mutuals, Philadelphia Pythians, Chicago Uniques, St. Louis Black Stockings, Cuban Giants and Chicago Unions are documented, as well as lesser known teams like the Wilmington Mutuals, Newton Black Stockings, San Francisco Enterprise, Dallas Black Stockings, Galveston Flyaways, Louisville Brotherhoods and Helena Pastimes. Player biographies trace their connections between teams across the country. Essays frame the biographies, discussing the social and cultural events that shaped black baseball. Waiters and barbers formed the earliest organized clubs and developed local, regional and national circuits. Some players belonged to both white and colored clubs, and some umpires officiated colored, white and interracial matches. High schools nurtured young players and transformed them into powerhouse teams, like Cincinnati's Vigilant Base Ball Club. A special essay covers visual representations of black baseball and the artists who created them, including colored artists of color who were also baseballists.