Baseball's early labor wars America's national pastime has been marked from its inception by bitter struggles between owners and players over profit, power, and prestige. In this labor history of baseball from its beginning to 1920, Robert Burk describes the evolution of the ballplaying world force and recounts its battles for a place in baseballs decision-making structure. Tracing the development of franchise competition, rival leagues, and trade wars - and the boom-and-bust cycles, franchise bankruptcies, and Jeague mergers they triggered in turn - he explores the off-field acrimony that characterized the sport's labor-management relations.
About the Author :
Winner of the 1994 Macmillan-SABR Baseball Research Award, Society for American Baseball Research A 1995 Choice Outstanding Academic Book Robert F. Burk is professor and chair of the history department at Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio.
Review :
"Never Just a Game will be useful for many economic, business, and labor historians, even those who are not sports fans." -- Journal of Economic History
"A detailed study of baseball's labor-management relations from the first all-professional team, the undefeated 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, to the 1919 Black Sox, an era when the owners, not the players were in total command." -- Jerome Holtzman, Chicago Tribune
"A fascinating look at baseball's origins, including the early days before it dawned on those involved that baseball could become a money-making enterprise. The preface alone is worth the price of the book." -- NINE
"A fascinating story, well told." -- CHOICE
"A meticulously researched account of the history of labour-management struggles in baseball up to 1920. . . . It is also a lively, highly readable volume filled with fascinating anecdotes about players, rule changes, and so on. As such, the book will appeal to both the serious student of business history and the layman with merely an interest in the game itself." -- Business History
"A very carefully argued and meticulously researched book." -- Australasian Journal of American Studies
"Burk has provided the clearest and richest account of baseball's evolution as a business that I have seen. His narrative is well written, lively, and thoroughly enjoyable." -- Andrew Zimbalist, author of Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime
"Burk proves that when it comes to baseball's money issues, the more things change -- the more they stay the same." -- USA Today Baseball Weekly
"The best study of the sport's turbulent early labor wars." -- North Carolina Historical Review
