[Robert F. Burk]Much More Than a Game : Players, Owners, and American Baseball since 1921(pdf){Zzzzz}

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.

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; 1 edition (March 5, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807825921
ISBN-13: 978-0807825921

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
As a microcosm of society, organized baseball has survived its share of battles over racism, pay inequity, unionizing and scandals. Here, Burk, chair of the history department at Muskingum College, follows up Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920 with an in-depth look at the sport as a business from its post-WWI golden age to beyond the 1994 players' strike. With the increasing globalization of baseball, Burk argues for a future of greater economic predictability and increased on-field-off-field cooperation ("the players' own interests might prove best served by agreeing to a new partnership in which labor peace and a formal coequal role in industry decisions was gained in exchange for accepting reasonable leaguewide minimum and maximum payrolls"). The author divides the past 80 years into two discrete periods: the first, the "paternalistic era," and the second, the "inflationary era," which began when baseball, and the nation, were forever changed by the civil rights movement and a generation unafraid to question authority. As he chronicles the history of baseball's labor movement (the section describing the conditions minority players had to endure in the '40s and '50s is especially interesting), Burk focuses on the major people like Curtis Flood, who accused the league of conspiracy when he was traded, and Fay Vincent, who alienated players and team owners during his reign as baseball commissioner a focus that significantly animates his heavily detailed narrative. (Mar. 5) Forecast: Although primed for publication just before Opening Day 2001, Burk's exhaustive analysis is geared for a keen but ultimately small readership among the legions of baseball book-buying enthusiasts; despite its energetic title, stores should anticipate only modest sales.

From Library Journal
Burk (history, Muskingum Coll.) has written a companion to his Never Just a Game: Players, Owners and American Baseball to 1920. Burk focuses on baseball's volatile labor history, contrasting the "paternalistic era" of 1921 through the early 1960s (which was often bleak and unfair to many players) with the seeming prosperity of current times. In these days of escalating salaries and costs and the friction that exists between players and management, this book provides scholarly background. Libraries featuring comprehensive sports and/or labor relations collections should consider.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

A Fine Discussion of Labor Relations in Major League Baseball since the Roaring Twenties
By Roger D. Launius VINE VOICE on April 8, 2006
This is the second volume of a projected two-volume history of labor relations in Major League Baseball (MLB). It deals with the period since 1921 and focuses on the integration of the game beginning in 1947, the labor disputes of MLB in the 1960s and 1970s when a rejuvenated Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) under Marvin Miller won a series of bitter contests with the owners that eventually led to "free agency." During this period profound changes took place in labor relations in MLB. Mining records of MLB at Cooperstown and at other repositories, Burk fashions an interesting and useful narrative of the evolution of labor relations. He divides his book into two major parts; the first is what he appropriately calls the "paternalistic era" between 1921 and the early 1970s and the second is an "inflationary era" in the post-free agency period since that time.

Although he discusses earlier management/labor issues, the centerpiece of this book is its discussion of the transformation of the Major League Players Association from a moribund organization into an efficient and exceptionally effective union in the 1960s when Marvin Miller assumed the position of executive director. Perhaps no union leader has been more effective than Marvin Miller in changing the nature of owner/employee relations. When he took over the MLPBA in the middle part of the 1960s Miller brought a wealth of experience in union organizing to a completely new arena. The moribund organization he took over had been a defacto arm of MLB and had succeeded in aiding in the preservation of the status quo in the game that has reigned since the first part of the twentieth century.