Louis Cardinals Research Articles

The Baseball Trust: A History of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption by Stuart Banner (review)

Reviewed by: The Baseball Trust: A History of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption by Stuart Banner Peter Catapano The Baseball Trust: A History of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption. By Stuart Banner. New York: Oxford University Press. 2013. During the 1960s, with the creation of the Super Bowl and the merger of the National Football and American Football League, football clearly surpassed the “national pastime” of baseball as the country’s most popular and profitable professional sport. However, despite the changes to professional sports brought about by jet travel and ubiquitous media coverage, baseball has the unique distinction of exemption from federal antitrust laws. Stuart Banner, a law professor from the University of California, Los Angeles, has traced the long and, sometime, tortured paths of legislation and court decisions that date back to the very beginnings of professional sports in the 19th century and the era of trust busting. Banner traces the combination of ruthless competition and owners’ self-interest that created the modern Major League, telling a story not very different from other corporate consolidations during the Gilded Age. Over time, the two major leagues, the National League (founded in 1876) and the American League (founded in 1901), consolidated their dominance over all competing teams and leagues in apparent contradiction to the spirit and the letter of antitrust law. However, the “baseball trust” was able to avoid the most onerous restriction of the growing antitrust movement that was directed at Standard Oil and the other giants of the era. Banner attempts to answer the question of why baseball was treated differently from other businesses. He does so by dismissing the common explanation that baseball’s cultural status as the “national pastime” is at the root of this distinction of law. Instead, he argues that the exemption is the result of sophisticated business and legal tactics by Major League baseball practiced over nearly a century. From the owners’ perspective, the profitability of their sport depended on the “reserve clause.” This unique feature of baseball contracts was introduced in the 1880s, despite vigorous opposition from players. Owners insisted that they continued to hold or “reserve” the rights to a player even after his contract expired. Players were left with little alternative but to renew their contracts with their ball club at terms favorable to the owner. This oddity of contract law was upheld in a 1922 Supreme Court ruling that exempted baseball from federal anti-trust laws. Despite efforts by disgruntled players and by renegade owners, no court challenge to this power of the Major Leagues proved successful. Political leaders in states and districts with Major Leagues teams also worried about offending local club owners who might threaten to relocate to another city. Politicians showed little enthusiasm for regulating baseball, fearing fans might hold a grudge at the ballot box. Banner also includes efforts by players to shape the business rules of the game, including John Montgomery Ward, the baseball player turned lawyer who attempted to create the “Player’s League” in 1890, and St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood, who unsuccessfully challenged the reserve clause in the Supreme Court case Flood v. Kuhn (1972). Overall, The Baseball Trust is impeccably researched and a valuable history of the politics, law and business of professional sports. [End Page 174] Peter Catapano City University of New York Copyright © 2014 Mid-America American Studies Association

Book Review: Curt Flood in the Media: Baseball, Race, and the Demise of the Activist-Athlete, by Abraham Iqbal Khan

Curt Flood in the Media: Baseball, Race, and the Demise of the Activist-Athlete. Abraham Iqbal Khan. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012. 208 pp. $55.00 hbk.Many communication efforts have gone astray largely because the organizers have thought primarily about the short-term consequences of what they did and said. They focused on handling crises or fending off threats without regard to thinking long-term about basic principles. As a result, the organizations involved have won battles but lost wars.This volume reports a case of losing a battle but winning a war. Curt Flood, a star outfielder with the St. Louis Cardinals, challenged Major League Baseball's reserve clause in the fall of 1969. That clause in a player's contract made him the property of the team he played for, in perpetuity, unless and until the team released, sold, or traded him.Flood lost his appeal in the courts, including a 5-3 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. He sat out the 1970 season, apparently contributing to a decline in skill. He then retired after playing only thirteen games in 1971. However, the reserve clause was doomed by the public uproar that the case had caused. Many said Flood led the way to economic justice for blacks much as Jackie Robinson had paved the way for them to play in the big leagues in 1947. Some even referred to the Cardinal star as a Abraham Lincoln.In 1974, an arbitrator granted free agency-the right to negotiate with other teams-to pitchers Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos. Both had sat out a year. And, in 1976, club owners agreed to a modification of the reserve clause that allowed players to negotiate with other teams after playing for six years with one club.This book, Curt Flood in the Media: Baseball, Race, and the Demise of the Activist- Athlete, presents a rhetorical analysis of media coverage of the Flood case and its context by Abraham Iqbal Khan, an assistant professor of communication and Africana studies at the University of South Florida. Khan looked at the mainstream media (pri- marily the New York Times), sports publications (especially the Sporting News), and the black press in America (with special emphasis on the Chicago Defender and Baltimore Afro-American). He also quoted at length academic writing about blacks in athletics-particularly sociologist Harry Edwards-and Flood's own memoir, The Way It Is.Khan notes that Jackie Robinson changed the status quo in baseball by assimilating with the white establishment. Called the patron saint of black activists, Robinson broke the color barrier when, with the encouragement of Dodgers owner Branch Rickey, he often turned the other cheek in the face of prejudice and discrimination. He illustrated a neo-liberal view-working within the system so blacks could advance by being represented in a single public sphere. Ultimately, according to this view, skin color should not matter.Robinson had little to say about politics. In testimony before the Red-hating House Un-American Activities Committee, he did take issue with a widely quoted statement by leftist activist Paul Robeson that black Americans would refuse to fight for their country if World War III were to break out because of the injustice they and their ancestors had suffered.In the 1960s and 1970s, America saw growing protests against various forms of injustice. Black athletes joined the fray. In an oft-noted case, U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists, covered with black gloves, in giving a black- power salute on the medal stand at the 1968 summer Olympics in Mexico City. …

Athletes as Objects of Property: A Kantian Rethinking of Flood v. Kuhn

In the 1972 case Flood v. Kuhn, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Kurt Flood petitioned to the United States Supreme Court arguing that professional baseball’s century-old reserve system was illegal. In the case, which was ultimately unsuccessful but led to the establishment of modern free agency, Flood argued that by granting teams the perpetual right to renew players’ contracts and the right to unilaterally trade players to other teams, the reserve system treated him as “a piece of property to be bought and sold” and reduced him to a “well-paid slave”. In this paper, I justify Flood’s claim by appeal to a Kantian division of rights. I argue for a Kantian conception of rights under which property rights are properly defined as rights in rem in external objects; on the basis that the right a team holds in a ballplayer under the reserve system is alienable and holds against all the world, I argue that it is a right in rem and accordingly constitutes a property right under Kant’s view. I then argue that the reserve system treats the player as a slave by constraining his purposiveness such as to violate a Kantian conception of the innate right of humanity. On this basis I argue that Flood was right to conclude that the reserve system treats the player as an object of property akin to a slave.

Carl Hubbell: A Biography of the Screwball King (review)

Reviewed by: Carl Hubbell: A Biography of the Screwball King Jesse Draper Lowell L. Blaisdell . Carl Hubbell: A Biography of the Screwball King. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011. 220 pp. Paper, $29.95 The story behind Lowell L. Blaisdell's Carl Hubbell: A Biography of the Screwball King immediately informs the reader why this is such a fun book to read. This is, of course, assuming the reader has spent the prerequisite lifetime devoted to the love of baseball and has mastered the (dying) art of "watching" the box scores. Blaisdell explains, "By the age of eleven, I had taken up box score perusal as a pastime. July 3, 1933, being a Monday, I looked with alacrity [End Page 138] at the box scores of the Sunday Games. One absolutely astonished me. In the opener of a Polo Grounds double-header, the New York Giants had outlasted the St. Louis Cardinals in eighteen innings. Astonishment turned to disbelief when the box score showed the Giants had used a single pitcher, Carl Hubbell. How, I asked myself could a team ask its hurler to last out the equivalent of two regular-length games?" (1). Blaisdell is a life-long Cubs fan, but that eighteen-inning game also made him a life-long fan of Carl Hubbell. Many baseball fans have a moment like that. Kerry Wood striking out twenty Houston Astros was mine. One can empathize with the sense of advocacy sometimes found in Blaisdell's tone (though it is hardly necessary in Hubbell's case). He was so affected by Hubbell's eighteen-inning gem, in fact, that he devotes the entire (albeit short) fourth chapter to the effort. Blaisdell's book is broken up into sixteen relatively short chapters spanning Hubbell's career in more or less chronological fashion, though the chapters focus on events or themes more so than neatly demarcated time periods. The first chapter, titled "Varieties of Farming," deals with Hubbell's rise through the minor leagues and Detroit's embarrassing failure to allow Hubbell to use his screwball. Without the screwball, they did not recognize what they had in the future Hall of Famer and so sent him to the Giants for $50,000. From there, the author details Hubbell's development under John McGraw, his ascension to becoming the Giants ace, and various highlights throughout his career before closing with Hubbell's time as the Giants farm director and his retirement years. Blaisdell's narrative is limited, as he himself admits, by a lack of primary sources (autobiography, interviews, letters, etc.) and the consequent need to depend on newspapers and box scores. Despite hopes of outdoing the journalists of Hubbell's time by gathering "more about Hubbell than they had," Blaisdell "found only what the press had reported at the time in bits and pieces" (3). At times, particularly in sections recounting games played, the narrative comes across like Steve Stone doing color commentary for a box score. The challenge of bringing past baseball games to life from box scores and statistics is one every historian of the game faces. The narrative is somewhat hard to follow at points because of the multiple names that refer to ball clubs. In the same sentence, the Cubs become the Bruins; in another, the Tigers become the Bengals; and the Giants suddenly become "the travelers" for a paragraph or two. On the other hand, one of the real strengths of this effort lies in the author's ability to present legendary stories with the enthusiasm of a fourteen-year-old kid. The eighteen-inning gem mentioned at the beginning of this review is contextually seated four days prior to the first All-Star game, which was to be held in Comiskey Park on July 6, 1933 (56). In the following year's All-Star [End Page 139] game, Hubbell strikes out five Hall of Famers consecutively: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin (95). And less than half a year later, we see the Babe starting in left field on opening day for the Boston Braves. After striking out against Hubbell in that All-Star game, and after being released in the offseason after...

Sudden Death: Examining the Duty of Care in Football Training Camp Fatalities

According to figures from a study performed by the University of North Carolina National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research, 18 high school and college players died of heat stroke or related conditions since 1995. Northwestern senior safety, Rashidi Wheeler, succumbed to bronchial asthma-related complications during a “voluntary” August 3, 2001 pre-season practice, while his teammates continued to run appropriately named “suicide” windsprint drills as he collapsed. Wheeler had suffered at least 30 asthma attacks during his career with Northwestern and was inexplicably encouraged by trainers to breath into a bag after his last episode, presumably hastening his demise.Unlike scholastic football, there had only been two deaths on the field in the NFL until recently. J.V. Cain, a tight end for the St. Louis Cardinals died of a heart attack in a 1979 practice, and Chuck Hughes, a wide receiver for the Detroit Lions, also from heart heart failure, in 1972 during a game against the Chicago Bears.The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reports that 14 high school football players, two college football players, and one semi-pro player died from heatstroke from 1995 to 2000. On August 1, 2001, Minnesota Vikings All-Pro offensive tackle, Korey Stringer, suffered the first heat-related death in the NFL’s 82 year history. Stringer had weakened noticeably from the rigor of preseason conditioning in the previous practice, and with an ambient “heat index” of 103 degrees at the Mankato Minnesota training facility, his body temperature eclipsed 108.8 degrees and he ultimately experienced massive heat stroke induced multiple organ system failure.Both Stringer and Wheeler are suspected of using performance enhancers containing “ephedra,” a generally unregulated herbal supplement that has been attributed to at least 17 deaths and 800 illnesses. Wheeler’s autopsy indicated trace amounts of the controversial substance and while Stringer’s did not, the Vikings have stated that players saw him ingest performance enhancers prior to that fateful session and that numerous supplements were located in his locker. Not suprisingly, the NFL banned ephedrine in the aftermath of Stringer’s demise as had the NCAA and IOC prior to these tragedies.

The House That Cultural Capital Built: The Saga of the New Yankee Stadium

New York Yankees are the most successful franchise in American sports. They have won twenty-seven world championships, ten more than the next closest franchise, the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association (NBA), and sixteen more than the next closest baseball franchise, the St. Louis Cardinals. A list of famous Yankees players reads like a miniature Hall of Fame, featuring icons like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Don Mattingly, and Derek Jeter. Being the marquee franchise in the nation's largest city and having unrivaled on-the-field success have provided the New York Yankees with a tremendous amount of cultural capital. In his essay, The Forms of Capital Pierre Bourdieu famously describes how various aspects of culture, such as education and art, are acquired and exchanged in a similar economy to that of financial capital. Bourdieu writes, the social conditions of its transmission and acquisition are more disguised than those of economic capital, it [cultural capital] is predisposed to function as symbolic capital, i.e. to be unrecognized as capital and recognized as legitimate competence. (1) Much could be written about how and why the Yankees have been able to become such a dominant force within Major League Baseball (MLB), but in the interest of brevity, this paper will simply acknowledge the cultural capital that has been amassed by the Yankees franchise in order to examine how it was spent to procure a lavish new stadium for the team. (2) New York Yankees exploited their cultural capital over the South Bronx (which has very little cultural capital), and this power dynamic allowed the Yankees to build the monumental stadium they wanted while avoiding any substantial concessions to the people of the Bronx. New York Yankees' cultural capital is directly related to their financial capital. team is the richest in baseball, with annual revenues over $300 million. With the advertising revenue of their own cable TV network, $117 million in gate receipts, and $30 million in licensed merchandise, the Yankees are able to afford the highest payroll in MLB. (3) This means they can afford to outpay any other team for the best players in the game. star players and continuous championship expectations acquired with their financial capital add to the treasure chest of cultural capital the New York Yankees have been building upon for over one hundred years. Discussing the interplay between economic capital and the other forms of capital, such as cultural capital, Bourdieu observes, It has to be posited simultaneously that economic capital is at the root of all the other types of capital and that these transformed, disguised forms of economic capital, never entirely reducible to that definition, produce their most specific effects only to the extent that they conceal ... the fact that economic capital is at their root. (4) New York Yankees have an extraordinary amount of economic capital with which to do business, but their ability to attract star players and lucrative media contracts cannot be simply reduced to their cash flow. Though the Yankees' cultural capital is rooted in their economic capital, it produces its most specific effects by concealing that the mystique of star players, championship trophies, and Hollywood screenplays is rooted in economic capital. original Yankee Stadium embodies the team's cultural capital. On the surface, it is simply a building where the successful franchise has won many games, but it has developed its own cultural cache over time, concealing the enormous amounts of economic capital invested into the team and the stadium itself. Yankee Stadium was opened in 1923, during the prime of Babe Ruth's career. It has since been commonly referred to as the House That Ruth Built, because the incredible number of fans who would pay to see Ruth play provided the franchise with much of the capital needed to build the new stadium. …

Shotgun on My Chest: Memoirs of a Lewis and Clark Book Collector by Roger Wendlick Anneliese Dehner

 Reviews absorbed into other tribes.In other cases,tribes that were once thought extinct (usually not by their memberships but by outsiders and federal agencies) have reasserted themselves in the last few decades”(p.xxiii).Still,the revised edition writes off some groups too quickly and leaves out others altogether. Most notably, Canadian First Nations are entirely excluded,which tends to reinforce artificial boundaries even as the authors recognize them as “arbitrary” (p. xix). Their employment of the term tribe, without definition or discussion, likewise ignores the constructed and contested nature of that category. When Ruby and Brown began writing , historians generally treated Indian tribes as discrete entities with clearly bounded territories and traditions.Since that time,the thrust of most ethnographic and historical scholarship has been to demonstrate the dynamism and fluidity of tribal identities. In the Pacific Northwest especially,the tribes we know today formed largely in response to the reservation system and other federal policies,which aimed to simplify and standardize a much more complicated set of human relationships rooted in kinship ties and village affiliations. By citing reservation censuses uncritically, Ruby and Brown suggest that it was possible for government agents to sort Pacific Northwest Indians into neat tribal boxes before they became hopelessly amalgamated or absorbed into others. In truth, the region’s Native communities had always been interconnected, and individual identities had always been in flux. American colonialism merely accelerated the process and channeled it along particular lines. The Guide acknowledges this fact, after a fashion, by listing aboriginal groups separately from the confederated tribes of the present.In their rigid representation of tribal boundaries, however, the authors present a somewhat distorted and ahistorical picture of the world Pacific Northwest Indians inhabited at the time of contact. The dated character of some material is evident in other ways as well, including unfortunate expressions and generalizations that gloss over more complex and unpleasant realities. White missionaries, for example, are described as“attempting to save Clatsop souls,” while Kalapuyan headmen compelled to sign treaties are said to have “ironically . . . facilitated the occupation of their territory” (pp. 3, 41). Ruby and Brown sometimes compound such missteps by failing to provide adequate cultural context for Native practices such as polygamy, shamanism, and doctor killing. To be fair, however, they took on a monumental and unenviable task in synthesizing for the public a vast body of information about a wide array of indigenous peoples. They did so in the belief that improved understanding could help right past wrongs, and for that as well as their scholarly contributions they are owed a debt of gratitude. Andrew H. Fisher The College of William and Mary Shotgun on My Chest: Memoirs of a Lewis and Clark Book Collector by Roger Wendlick with illustrations by Anneliese Dehner 12-Gauge Press, Portland, Oregon, 2009. Illustrations, photographs. 299 pages. $28.00 paper. Autobiography can sometimes be boring and self-serving.RogerWendlick’s life story,as told by himself,runs contrary to that thought.Filled with — dare I say it! — educational insight, Shotgun on My Chest is a happy story.“I’m on a mission,” Wendlick boasted to a rare book appraiser on November 12, 1988.“One day, Mr. Tweney, I am going to have the largest collection of Lewis and Clark books ever assembled” (p. 70). And then he proceeded to do just that. As Dizzy Dean of the St. Louis Cardinals once told youngsters in the Knot Hole Gang,“It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.” Wendlick’s mania for collecting started innocently in December 1975. At first, he was  OHQ vol. 112, no. 2 interested in memorabilia from the 1905 Portland Lewis and Clark Exposition. He made the transition to book collecting in 1984, and by 1995, Wendlick had grown so worldly in the field that he possessed most of the main Lewis and Clark titles listed in standard bibliographies . Part of the excitement in following Wendlick as he travels a circuit from bookstores to auction houses to book fairs and to the homes of private collectors is being introduced to the people he meets. Seattle book collector George Tweney is one such person. Preston “Mac” McMann, the proprietor of Portland...

War Games: The Business of Major League Baseball during World War II

The 1941 winter Major League Baseball meetings in Chicago promised to be an important event. Throughout the 1941 season, Donald Barnes, the president of the American League's St. Louis Browns, laid the groundwork with his fellow owners to approve the move of his struggling franchise from St. Louis to Los Angeles for the 1942 season. Barnes accounted for everything, securing agreements and arranging to pay a fee to the Pacific Coast League for expansion into its territory. It appeared that everyone wanted the relocation to happen, and the city of Los Angeles offered the Browns a financial guarantee of five hundred thousand spectators per year, a figure nearly three times the Browns' 1941 attendance, with the city paying the difference if attendance was below that level. Even the National League St. Louis Cardinals contributed, paying the Browns two hundred thousand dollars to cover moving expenses and taking over their lease at Sportsman's Park, the stadium the two teams shared. Everything was in place for a mere formality of a vote scheduled for Monday, December 8. The events of December 7, 1941, changed all that, suddenly and forcibly dragging the United States into the war raging in Europe and Asia, and dashing Barnes's dream of bringing Major League Baseball to the west coast. (1) The mythology of baseball is a combination of fact and fiction, fiction that sometimes stretches the truth and sometimes is a complete fabrication. Due to the game's long-standing popularity, some of its myths are embraced as facts, even in the face of contrary evidence. This is particularly evident in writings about the role of Major League Baseball during World War II, with historians consistently celebrating the game's contributions to the American war effort. However, a critical evaluation of the relationship between Major League Baseball, society, and America's leaders during World War II reveals a sport presenting an image of patriotism, but acting to maintain the status quo and protect profits. BACKGROUND Baseball and the Military Baseball has long and deep associations with the military. Union soldiers took their baseball equipment on campaign during the Civil War, and the game was played by troops during and following the Spanish-American War of 1898. (2) When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the popularity of Major League Baseball was already firmly established, though the league suffered a backlash from a population that wondered why professional athletes remained safe at home playing a game while millions of men mobilized to fight and die in Europe. Despite the criticisms, the game itself remained a favorite within the military, whose leaders viewed it as a means for conditioning and teaching teamwork. (3) Baseball at the Outbreak of World War II Major League Baseball's attendance peaked at 10.1 million in 1930, and although the depression years reduced it as much as 40 percent, by 1940 attendance was once again on the verge of exceeding 10 million fans per season. (4) This was imperative in an industry that earned the majority of its revenue through ticket sales, which generated roughly $19.6 million in income for the league's teams in 1940. (5) Despite the popularity of the game and high attendance, profitability remained elusive, and every year during the 1930s saw a minimum of five teams reporting net operating losses. (6) This is misleading, however, as many owners also served as executives with their franchises, so even though a team lost money the owner still often received a salary. The establishment of a commissioner in 1920 helped rid the game of gambling scandals and brought stability to the business relationships between the owners, though it failed to remove baseball's greatest blemish, racial segregation. Overall, Major League Baseball remained very popular in American society, and its top players received treatment similar to that of the top stars in other entertainment industries, something many viewed as moving fans away from loyalty to specific teams and towards individual players. …

Acceptance of the 2010 George M. Kober Medal

Acceptance of the 2010 George M. Kober Medal

High Flying Birds: The 1942 St Louis Cardinals

High Flying Birds: The 1942 St Louis Cardinals

Baseball's Forgotten Man: Curt Flood and the Transformation of American Sport

In October 1972, sportswriter Dick Young noted that almost none of the players on the American League champion Oakland Athletics, black or white, displayed any interest in Jackie Robinson when he entered their dugout during that year's World Series, only days before his death at the age of fiftythree. Young had covered the Brooklyn Dodgers for many years and closely observed Robinson as he broke the national pastime's color line in 1947, one of the most important civil rights achievements of the first half of the twentieth century. Yet Young was struck by the players' indifference, especially the blacks; and he commented that there seems to be a feeling among the current black players that they owe Jackie nothing.1 Thirteen years later in St. Louis, Robinson's widow threw out the first ball before game four of the World Series, to mark the fortieth anniversary of Robinson's signing a contract with the Dodgers organization. But when sportswriter Dave Anderson asked the St. Louis Cardinals' Vince Coleman, an African American, for a comment on Jackie Robinson, the rookie star snapped: I don't know nothin' about him. Why are you asking me about Jackie Robinson?2 Major league baseball players similarly failed to appreciate the enormous debt they owed to St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood, who arguably transformed American sports more than any athlete except for Jackie Robinson. Robinson was among only three major league baseball players, all retired, willing to testify on Flood's behalf when he filed suit against baseball's reserve system, which had governed labor relations in the sport for nearly a century. Like Robinson, who repeatedly denounced baseball for its slow pace in desegregating, Flood held the club owners' plantation mentality responsible for players' excessive subordination to management and lack of bargaining power.

Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty (review)

Reviewed by: Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty Lee Lowenfish Daniel R. Levitt. Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. 427 pp. Cloth, $29.95. Dan Levitt closes his thorough and indispensable biography of baseball executive Edward Grant Barrow with high praise from Branch Rickey. He was "the smartest man who ever was in baseball," declares Rickey, whose 1926 and 1942 St. Louis Cardinals were the only teams to beat Barrow's Yankees in a World Series. "He knows what a club needs to achieve balance, to become a pennant winner. I, perhaps, can judge the part, but Mr. Barrow can judge the whole" (379). Although Rickey was being too modest in the appraisal of his own career, there is no doubt that Barrow's achievement was unprecedented in baseball history. The Yankees' sustained excellence during Barrow's reign (1920 to 1946) put the word "dynasty" into the game's parlance and spawned a great divide in baseball fandom between those who love the Yankees for their aplomb and success and those who loathe them for their arrogance and unfair advantage as a huge market. One of the many strengths of Levitt's biography is that he provides ammunition for both sides in this schism while telling the story in an even-handed and convincing manner. Yankee haters and the pre-2004 Red Sox sufferers might well foam at the mouth when they learn that only days after Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees (and later such key players as third baseman Joe Dugan and pitchers Herb Pennock and Joe Bush) he attended the press conference as Barrow took the reins in the Bronx; on occasion, he even used a desk in the Yankee offices. It must be said, though, that Barrow was loyal to his friends, and Frazee was grateful that as Red Sox field manager Barrow had won a pennant and World Series in 1918 and supervised the conversion of Babe Ruth from starting pitcher to everyday outfielder. (Levitt convincingly argues that Barrow's role was more significant than Red Sox outfielder Harry Hooper's in the transformation.) Levitt also makes a strong case that it was money for theatrical productions, such as No, No, Nanette, that was a key motive in Frazee's Boston fire sales and not a rebuilding effort as argued by Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson in what Levitt calls "their otherwise excellent book, Red Sox Century" (163). Any student of baseball history who is not irreparably damaged by his loathing of Yankee entitlement will profit from Levitt's biography. Barrow surely paid his dues by the time he arrived in the Bronx, a fifty-two-year-old high school dropout from Des Moines, Iowa, who possessed experience at every level of baseball except player, with a few bouts as an amateur boxer thrown in for good measure. Early on, Barrow revealed a gift for talent scouting, two [End Page 161] of his earliest finds being Fred Clarke, who went on to be a Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame player and manager, and another immortal, Honus Wagner. Before he managed the Red Sox to the 1918 Series title, Barrow had worked as field boss for the Tigers, but he did not get along with owner Frank Navin, who fired him in the middle of his second season in 1904. Barrow soon found employment as a minor-league manager in Toronto and later Montreal while also playing important roles in the front office evaluating and acquiring players. One of his major achievements was transforming the Eastern League into the International League, a top pre–World War I minor-league circuit that bore the brunt of the Federal League war of 1914 and 1915 before peace came in 1916. Levitt excels at telling the stories of the internal machinations in baseball's labyrinthine off-field business. His excellent chapter on the Federal League war, "Fight These Fellows to a Finish," is taken from a Barrow war cry in which the executive took pride that he kept his eight-team league together despite the major threat from the...

One man out: Curt Flood versus baseball

When Curt Flood, all-star center fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, refused to be traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1968, he sent shock waves throughout professional baseball that ultimately reached the Supreme Court. Flood challenged the game's reserve clause system that bound players to teams as if they were property; and while others had previously spoken out against this arrangement, protected by Congress and the courts for a century, he was the first to pursue his grievance as doggedly or as far.Robert Goldman now offers a new look at Flood's efforts to shake the foundations of major league baseball. One Man Out takes readers back to the pre-steroid era when baseball was as much a passion as a pastime - and when race was often still a factor - to focus on decisions made in the courtrooms rather than the dugouts.Flood claimed that the prevailing system was illegal because it violated the Sherman antitrust laws by allowing teams to monopolize the sport in a way that impeded players' freedom and financial gain - and was even unconstitutional because it, in effect, imposed a form of slavery. Baseball owners countered that players owed their success to the reserve system because it maintained competitive balance among teams and heightened interest in the game, which helped fund their high salaries.Although the Supreme Court ruled against Flood, it left the door open to legislation that would remove baseball's special exemption from antitrust regulation and to future collective bargaining. With its credibility enhanced, the players' union continued negotiations until it finally won a version of free agency very similar to Flood's, with his final vindication coming in the form of the Curt Flood Act of 1998.In replaying the confrontation between Flood and baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, Goldman demonstrates that even a lost lawsuit, with its game-like competition, can be a landmark. And by telling the inside story of the case, he highlights a key labor relations issue in America's most popular sport. Concise and balanced, and written in a fast-paced narrative style, One Man Out reminds students, general readers, and fans that Flood holds a unique and important place in both baseball and American law.

Throwing Physics A Curve

It's March, and that means two things for David Peters: the start of the baseball season and appearing on television. Ever since his hometown St. Louis Cardinals won the 2006 World Series, he's appeared regularly on local news to explain the mechanics behind curveballs and suchlike.

The Rise of Baseball's Racial Quota System in the 1950s

Sportswriter John Lardner was a longtime observer and admirer of Branch Rickey. Assessing Rickey's St. Louis Cardinals before the 1934 season, a fiery outfit that would become immortalized as the Gashouse Gang, Lardner wrote presciently that Leo Durocher and Pepper Martin more energy and fire between them than you'll find in the entire rosters of many clubs. (1) When Rickey came to run the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s, Lardner watched as the executive built another powerhouse team. He saw through most of the smokescreens and cagey circumlocutions often employed by the man New York sportswriter Tom Meany memorably dubbed the Mahatma. When Rickey delayed Jackie Robinson's promotion from Montreal to Brooklyn until the last week of 1947 spring training, Lardner never doubted that the gifted black pioneer would make the roster and excel. Nor did the journalist ever believe that Rickey, despite his public vacillations, would not reinstate Leo Durocher as Brooklyn manager in 1948, given that his suspension for the entire 1947 season by commissioner Happy Chandler was unwarranted. Fast forward to 1954. Rickey is laboring in the fourth year of a so far very unsuccessful Pittsburgh Pirates rebuilding project, but Lardner, the eldest of many gifted writing sons of immortal humorist Ring Lardner, is still eager for Rickey's opinion on matters of sporting and social importance. In the Newsweek magazine May 10, 1954, issue, Lardner devotes his regular column to a discussion of The Fifty Per Cent Color Line. It is a piece inspired by a recent incident concerning Rickey's former team, the Dodgers, who benched left fielder Sandy Amoros on days that Don Newcombe was pitching. Lardner realizes that Brooklyn management fears the precedent of a starting lineup with five black players: Newcombe, Amoros, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Jim Junior Gilliam. (A year before, by the way, a lot of controversy had surrounded Jackie Robinson taking some playing time from Billy Cox at third base.) Remembering that Rickey had presided over the Dodgers' initial integration boldly, thoughtfully and successfully, Lardner writes, There are times when you wish he had worked the old field a while longer. What would he do, for instance, about the 50 per cent color line if he were still in Brooklyn? (2) In his heyday in Brooklyn, Rickey would usually give a thoughtful answer to a thoughtful question. Before the start of the 1950 season, his last year in Brooklyn, Rickey frankly admitted that when he traded fleet black center fielder Sam Jethroe to the Boston Braves, it was the first time in his long career he had let go of a player who might be better than those he retained. He conceded that ownership's fear of too many black players was a contributing reason, but he felt that, on the positive side, the Braves would at least have joined the Giants and Dodgers as a third National League team in the market for black players. (3) By 1954, however, Rickey was not eager to engage in a public colloquy with John Lardner on the quota system. He had his hands full trying to rebuild the cellar-dwelling Pirates, who had waited until the same year of 1954 to bring up their first black player, second baseman Curt Roberts. Though Rickey had hired twenty-two scouts of color in his first years as Pittsburgh boss, their work wouldn't bear fruit until after Rickey's departure from the Pittsburgh helm in 1955. (4) Yet I think that Lardner's unanswered rhetorical question in The Fifty Per Cent Color Line remains a provocative and important one to historians. It seems to me no coincidence that the article appeared just a week before the United States Supreme Court issued its historic decision against school segregation in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. It is also no coincidence that from 1951 to 1959 the National League pennant was monopolized by the three teams with the most black players: the New York Giants in '51 and '54, the Dodgers in Brooklyn in '52, '53, '55, and '56 and in Los Angeles in '59, and the Milwaukee Braves in '57 and '58. …

The Impact of Curt Flood's Minor League Baseball Experiences on His Lawsuit against Bowie Kuhn

On October 8, 1969, Curt Flood, the St. Louis Cardinals star center fielder for more than a decade, received a telephone call from Jim Toomey, an assistant to St. Louis general manager Bing Devine, to inform him that he had just been traded to the Philadelphia Phillies. (1) A trade in Major League Baseball was not unusual. It had happened many times before and to some of baseball's greatest stars. (2) Curt Flood, however, vowed not to accept what he considered an affront to his basic human dignity. Instead of swallowing his pride and moving to Philadelphia, decided to sue Major League Baseball and its commissioner, Bowie Kuhn. The U.S. Supreme Court had already upheld Major League Baseball and its reserve system in two cases, Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs and Toolson v. New York Yankees. (3) Although Marvin Miller, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, honestly explained to that his lawsuit had little chance of success, would not be discouraged. (4) Facing an almost certain end to his playing career, spent three years pursuing his crusade to the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite the assistance of former Supreme Court justice Arthur Goldberg, Flood's legal team could not persuade the Court to overrule its two prior decisions. Curt Flood, however, had struck a blow for basic human dignity. He players who refused to support him at his trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to the fundamental unfairness of a system that disallowed them the basic decision as to where and for whom to work. (5) Although lost his quest, two white ballplayers would win free agency from a panel of arbitrators in 1975. (6) The modern era of free agency for professional athletes was born. Today's players enjoy salaries that far exceed the average American worker. However, few understand the sacrifice that Curt made on their behalf. What motivated to file his lawsuit and pursue it with such vigor? The self-professed child of the sixties was a complex and sensitive man. (7) Judy Pace, Curt Flood's widow, offered her insight on why her husband, an African American man, would challenge baseball during the decade of the Civil Rights Movement: When you think about it, it's not surprising that a black man did this. A white man was not going to have that consciousness. A white man was not walking around thinking, my rights are always being penalized. That's what Curt called it--the penalty of being black. There were always penalties for being black. If you never had that inflicted on you, then you might think everything was okay. (8) Curt Flood's crusade, however, transcended race. William C. Rhoden explained this eloquently: What made Flood's fight resonate is that at one level his battle went beyond race. said he was filing this suit against a situation that was improper for all ballplayers. Many white players never thought of themselves as being on a plantation or as being only so much chattel. But the legacy of black people in sports had Flood; that history had tuned him in to a different frequency than white players had access to. He used the insight of that legacy to help all players, black and white, fight a corrupt system. (9) A major part of what sensitized Flood was his two years of Minor League baseball in the Jim Crow South. Flood, like so many baseball players who faced a climb through Minor League baseball in the decade after Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's racial barrier, endured the brunt of white Americans who refused to accept the basic rights of an African American to play the national pastime on the same field as white players. (10) possessed complex reasons for not accepting a trade from one employer to another. However, it would probably be an error to discount his Minor League experience as anything less than a significant factor in his decision to write Commissioner Bowie Kuhn: After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. …

Radiographic Findings in the Shoulder and Elbow of Major League Baseball Pitchers

Background Changes in the dominant shoulder and elbow of professional pitchers have been noted on radiographs, magnetic resonance imaging scans, and ultrasound studies. The relationship of these findings to future injury and to time lost from play has not been identified. Hypothesis Degenerative changes of the shoulder and elbow are common findings on the radiographs of asymptomatic Major League Baseball pitchers. The changes are cumulative with increased pitching. These findings are not predictive of time on the disabled list. Study Design Cohort study (prognosis); Level of evidence, 4. Methods Fifty-seven asymptomatic Major League Baseball pitchers participating in the St Louis Cardinals spring training camp underwent routine preseason radiographic screening of their dominant shoulder and elbow between 1986 and 1998. Radiographs were reviewed for osteophytes, cystic changes, joint-space narrowing, and loose bodies. All findings were recorded as present or absent. Public baseball records were reviewed for arm dominance, age, years of professional pitching, professional innings pitched, shoulder or elbow injury or surgery, and time on the disabled list. These factors were statistically evaluated for their possible association with findings seen on preseason radiographs. Results Shoulder radiographs were available for 57 pitchers, and elbow radiographs were available for 56 pitchers. Both groups had an average age of 29 years. The average number of radiographic findings was 3 for the shoulder and 7 for the elbow. Comparing pitchers on the disabled list for a shoulder or elbow injury with those not on the disabled list demonstrated no significant difference in the age, number of seasons pitched, or number of innings pitched between the 2 groups. When individual radiographic findings were compared, no single finding was predictive of disabled list status (P > .05 in all cases). The sum of radiographic findings for the shoulder was significantly correlated with the number of innings pitched in professional baseball (Pearson correlation coefficient, 0.46; P = .0004). The elbow data showed a similar correlation (Pearson correlation coefficient, 0.38; P = .003). When select individual radiographic findings were evaluated for an association with the number of innings pitched, the presence of acromioclavicular joint findings in the shoulder and radial head osteophytes and radioulnar joint findings in the elbow increased with an increase in innings pitched (P < .05). Conclusion Professional pitchers develop degenerative changes over time in both the shoulder and elbow of their dominant (pitching) arm due to chronic repetitive stresses placed across the joints. These findings do not predict time spent on the Major League Baseball disabled list.

Branch Rickey: baseball's ferocious gentleman

He was not much of a player and not much more of a manager, but by the time Branch Rickey (1881-1965) finished with baseball, he had revolutionized the sport-not just once but three times. In this definitive biography of Rickey - the man sportswriters dubbed The Brain, The Mahatma, and, on occasion, El Cheapo - Lee Lowenfish tells the full and colorful story of a life that forever changed the face of game. As the mastermind behind the Saint Louis Cardinals from 1917 to 1942, Rickey created the farm system, which allowed small-market clubs to compete with the rich and powerful. Under his direction in the 1940s, the Brooklyn Dodgers became truly the first America's team. By signing Jackie Robinson and other black players, he single-handedly thrust baseball into the forefront of the civil rights movement. Lowenfish evokes the peculiarly American complex of God, family, and baseball that informed Rickey's actions and his accomplishments. His book offers an intriguing, richly detailed portrait of a man whose life is itself a crucial chapter in the history of American business, sport, and society.

The Making of Ed Barrow

In the late teens of the previous century, a number of wealthy industrialists bought into major league baseball, dramatically changing the fraternity of owners. Historically, the wealthiest of American society generally shunned sports ownership. Teams were owned by upper middle class professionals and businessmen; many ownership syndicates included local politicians or those well connected to them. But the challenge of the upstart Federal League for major league status in the mid-teens generated widespread financial losses for both the major leagues and the upstart Federals. To bolster their financial wherewithal, both sides searched for well capitalized owners to purchase struggling franchises. This new class of owner transformed the way successful teams were operated.Under the traditional structure, the manager and team president (typically the principal owner) ran the team and shared the team-building role: finding, signing, and trading players. The precise division of labor depended on the president's belief in his own expertise. As owners who ran large industrial concerns came into baseball, they recognized that the industry was growing too large and complex to be overseen by just two people, one of whom (the team president) generally had interests outside of baseball. Several of these owners hired what we would now call a general manager, although the title was not common at the time. In Chicago, gum magnate William Wrigley brought in Bill Veeck, Sr.; St. Louis Browns owner Phil Ball, an ice-plant manufacturer, hired Bob Quinn. When car dealer Sam Breadon acquired the St. Louis Cardinals, he kept team president Branch Rickey but transferred him to a general manager role. And most importantly for this story, on October 28, 1920, New York brewery owner Jacob Ruppert and his partner with the Yankees, Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston, engaged Ed Barrow.Barrow's experience and personality made him the perfect hire. With Ruppert's encouragement and support, Barrow created one of the great dynasties in sports history. Prior to his joining the team, the Yankees had never won a pennant; in his 24 seasons at the helm, the club captured 14 flags and 9 World Series victories. Already 52 years old when he joined the Yankees, Barrow had spent a lifetime in baseball in just about every conceivable executive capacity: minor league manager, minor league owner, minor league president, and major league manager.After the Civil War, veteran John Barrow, his wife Effe Ann, and other extended family members left Ohio to farm the Great Plains in Nebraska. Edward Grant Barrow, the first of four sons, was born in Springfield, Illinois, during the tortuous journey, on May 10, 1868. Eventually the Barrow clan reached their homestead and labored to build a new life. For the early pioneers, however, life on the plains in general and farming in particular proved much more taxing than anticipated. After struggling for several years, John Barrow gave up and moved his family to Des Moines, Iowa.As a teenager in Des Moines, Barrow first gained executive experience (loosely defined) when he went to work at a newspaper managing the newsboys, a rough and unruly lot. Big and strapping, Barrow was the toughest of the bunch, and employed a physical, unrefined management style. In his later years he recalled fondly his time overseeing the youngsters. As a teenager Barrow also played baseball on several teams, but hurt his arm pitching in a cold rain. He later unsuccessfully tried to become a first baseman.At about this time, the late 1880s, baseball was exploding in popularity throughout the towns of the Midwest. Barrow first experienced big league baseball firsthand in late April 1887 when Cap Anson brought his Chicago National League club to Des Moines for two exhibition games. As baseball fever swept his hometown, Barrow helped organize an amateur league and secured a team for himself. A hustler and hard worker, he found a sponsor, Ed L. …

Baseball's Divisional Playoffs: A Better Format

Baseball’s Divisional Playoffs:A Better Format Franklin Lowenthal, Stephen Shmanske, and Paul D. Staudohar Introduction Major League Baseball's divisional playoff format has a major flaw. Sometimes the "reward" for achieving the number one seed is having to play the best of the three other teams in the divisional playoffs. Of course, this outcome is not intentional but rather the result of the rigid criteria by which the divisional matchups are selected. The number one seed must play the number four seed—that is, the wild card team—unless these two teams are in the same division; in that case the number one seed plays the division winner with the worst record—that is, the number three seed. Many examples can be cited where this unfair outcome resulted or almost resulted. In 2005 the St. Louis Cardinals were presumably anxious to play the San Diego Padres—a team that barely finished above .500. But had a team from the NL East won the wild card instead of the Houston Astros, St. Louis would have been forced to play that wild card team. Clearly, this would have been a much more difficult opponent for St. Louis, and instead the Atlanta Braves would have had an easy road to the National League Championship Series. In 2004 the New York Yankees were presumably anxious to play the Minnesota Twins, a team that they had done very well against during the prior two seasons. But had the Oakland Athletics won the wild card instead of the Boston Red Sox, the Yankees would have been forced to play a team whose starting pitching would have made a formidable opponent in a short, five-game series. In 2002 the New York Yankees were forced to play the wild card team, the Anaheim Angels, in the division series. The Angels were hot and did not miss a beat on the way to their first world championship, while the Yankees were left to wonder why they couldn't have played against the Minnesota Twins in the division series. We propose here an alternate method to selecting the divisional series matchups, one which is both simple and fair. Further, this method would, as a [End Page 94] byproduct, generate a tremendous amount of fan interest before the divisional playoffs even begin. Our proposal is borrowed from the realm of the duplicate-bridge world championships, where it is routinely used. The number one seed should simply be allowed to select its opponent from among the other three teams. We will justify this proposal and explain precisely how it could be implemented below. Fundamental Premise The number one seed has earned this rank as a result of compiling the best win/loss record in a 162-game season, easily the most demanding in professional sports. It seems self-evident that the team should be rewarded rather than punished for this achievement. The current reward has a twofold advantage. One is the home-field advantage, which is lower at 54 percent in baseball than it is in other professional sports. This was originally implemented by having the first two games away, followed by each of the next three potential games at home. But in practice this could end up with only one home game for the higher seed; so the format was modified to the current system with two home games followed by two away games and the possible fifth game at home. But the second reward is the critical one. Clearly, the goal should be to give the number one seed the easiest divisional series opponent. If they lose to this opponent, fine; but they should be matched against a team that, at least on paper, is distinctly inferior. The current format is based on three fallacious assumptions. The first is that the wild card team is the weakest of the playoff teams and should therefore be matched against the number one seed if possible. However, this was not the case in the National League in 2005, for example. The NL West–champion San Diego Padres had the poorest record of the NL playoff teams, and the two NL Central teams had the best. There are a number of reasons...