The Baseball Business: Pursuing Pennants and Profits in Baltimore - Hardcover

Miller, James Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807818763 ISBN 13: 9780807818763

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr, 1990

Synopsis

Draws on the experiences of the Baltimore Orioles to trace the development of the baseball business since 1950

About this title

About the Author

James Edward Miller, a prize-winning historian, has been an Orioles fan since the age of eight.

Reviews

The thrust of our national pastime as a business rather than merely a sport has intensified since the end of World War II, particularly during the last two decades. In this instructive study, Miller ( The United States and Italy, 1940-1950 ) looks at the marketing and economics of baseball, focusing on the Orioles of Baltimore. He examines the decline of the team's farm system, caused in part by the spread of television coverage of major league games; by the move of white city-dwellers to the suburbs with the concomitant failure of baseball to attract inner-city blacks to the ballpark; and especially by the increased power of the players as the reserve clause was ended and free agency began. The down-and-up fortunes of the Orioles make for a rich story and a profitable read. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Miller brings to this work the same careful scholarship he has applied to more traditional historical topics (e.g., his The United States and Italy, 1940-1950 , Univ. of North Carolina Pr., 1986) and produces an engrossing analysis of the effect the changing nature of baseball, the business, has had upon baseball, the game. The entire Baltimore Oriole organization, including the farm system, is examined from the early 1950s to the present. The elements are many, including marketing and television, community management versus autonomous control, labor relations, government relations, and racial issues. This well-documented, well-indexed work provides an excellent view of how baseball, and the Orioles specifically, have both gained and suffered from the changes wrought by the burgeoning profitability of our national pastime. An excellent work for fans and both business and popular culture scholars.
- Robert Aken, Univ. of Kentucky Libs., Lexington
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr
• Publication date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807818763
• ISBN 13: 9780807818763
• Binding: Hardcover