A prominent sports-law professor (Rutgers Univ.) and
baseball-salary arbitrator explains the obvious and not-so-obvious
reasons why baseball players and team owners seem to spend more
time arguing before judges than before field umpires. Abrams
asserts that "if baseball is the heart of America, the legal
process provides the sinews that hold it in place." Coming from a
sports-law practitioner and educator, such a pronouncement might
seem both simplistic and self-serving. However, going over the
game's history, from its inception in the mid-19th century to the
present, Abrams convincingly illustrates why the business of
baseball has supplanted the game itself in the American limelight.
To explain the relationship between law and baseball, the author
focuses on nine men and one woman who had pivotal roles in the
game's history - a group of players, owners, and litigators Abrams
calls the "All-Star Baseball Law Team." Using these individuals'
actions and related events, he discusses several major themes: John
Montgomery Ward's clashes with National League team owners over the
formation of a players' union at the end of the 19th century; the
Curt Flood case against baseball's reserve clause and its exemption
from federal anti-trust regulations in the 1970s; Pete Rose and the
issues of jurisdiction; baseball executives' struggles with the
commissioner's office over a vague yet binding mandate to act on
behalf of "the best interests of baseball." Abrams is astute and
unflinching in his judgments, yet shows admirable balance (although
he doesn't shy away from depicting how management's arrogance and
inability to organize in any but a collusive manner has contributed
to their poor public image and unsuccessful litigative record).
Also, he obligingly explains many terms often used but seldom
understood (in relation to baseball), and makes clear many subtle
distinctions, such as that between arbitration and mediation.
Interesting and illustrative, this is a book every thinking sports
fan should read. (Kirkus Reviews)
If baseball is the heart of America, the legal process provides the
sinews that hold it in place. It was the legal process that allowed
William Hulbert to bring club owners together in a New York City
hotel room in 1876 to form the National League, and ninety years
later, it allowed Marvin Miller to change a management-funded
fraternity of ballplayers into the strongest trade union in
America.
But how does collective bargaining and labor arbitration work in
the major leagues? Why is baseball exempt from the antitrust laws?
In Legal Bases, Roger Abrams has assembled an all-star baseball law
team whose stories illuminate the sometimes uproarious, sometimes
ignominious relationship between law and baseball that has made the
business of baseball a truly American institution.
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