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About Legal Bases: Baseball And The Law
Product description Illuminates the sometimes uproarious, sometimes ignominious relationship between law and baseball, looking at key personalities and concepts behind baseball's antitrust exemption, collective bargaining, and labor arbitration, and discussing drug use and gambling, enforcement of contracts, and the rights of owners and managers. Speculates on the implications of the 1996 collective bargaining agreement, and ponders emerging issues such as intellectual property, eminent domain, and gender equity. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or. Amazon.com Review Baseball may be just a game on the field, but it's a a complex web of contracts and consolidations off of it; from the moment William Hulbert invoked the power of the legal system to unite a disparate group of clubs into the National League in 1876, the law and the game have turned into fascinating teammates. Abrams, the Dean of Rutgers University Law School and a Major League salary arbitrator, has produced an engaging episodic history of the connection--from Monte Ward's attempt to form the first union in the late 1800s to the labor wars of the '90s that made the sports page sound like the civil code. Along the way, he stops to examine Napolean Lajoie and the institution of the reserve clause, baseball's anti-trust exemption and Curt Flood's fight for free agency, Marvin Miller and modern collective bargaining, arbitration, collusion, and the Pete Rose scandal. Comprehensive and anecdotal, Legal Bases covers as much ground as a good shortstop and interprets complex arguments and issues with the clarity of a catcher's sign. The final verdict: Appealingly absorbing. --Jeff Silverman From Publishers Weekly As much as the purist might insist that the game itself is the thing, not the salaries, contracts and cost over-runs on new stadiums, a rounded knowledge of the game is incomplete without considering baseball as a business. As dean of Rutgers Law School, baseball salary arbitrator and sincere grassroots fan, few have Abrams qualifications for writing on baseball and the law. The book is organized around "nine men and one woman who played pivotal roles in its history. They constitute our 'All-Star Baseball Law Team.' " The "team" (apparently the 10th player is justified by the designated hitter rule) is chosen to illustrate important principles of baseball and law dating from the 19th century (John Montgomery Ward) through the reserve clause challenge (Curt Flood) to baseball's crimes (Pete Rose). Abrams claims that the importance of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was too great to fit in just a chapter, but many readers will still wish for more on the man who shaped the business of baseball more than any other single individual. The book focuses almost entirely on the U.S. majors, though it would have been interesting to see more on international baseball or the minor leagues (e.g., on the recent Professional Baseball Agreement that dictates relations between minor and major league baseball or on minor league umpire Pam Postema). The writing is a bit dry and overly detailed, but the book will serve as a valuable reference for the ardent baseball student. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Abrams, Dean of Rutgers Law School and a major league baseball salary arbitrator, has written a scholarly study of a topic that seems so appropriate for our times, baseball litigation. Key people and historic incidents are highlighted in each chapter, including Curt Flood's fight against the reserve system, Marvin Miller and collective bargaining, the baseball strike of 1994-95, and more. A fitting addition to larger public and academic library collections. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews 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 historya 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. (10 b&w illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Review Wearing lightly his notable learning, Abrams writes with verve and intelligence. -- The New York Times Book Review, Allen D. Boyer From the Publisher An accessible, insightful look at how baseball and salary arbitration are shaped by law From the Back Cover On June 12, 1939, in dedicating the Baseball Hall of Fame, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis proclaimed: "I should like to dedicate this museum to all America, to lovers of good sportsmanship, healthy bodies, clean minds. For those are the principles of baseball." The game of baseball mirrors our history, our identity, and our culture. And, 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 toghether 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 I. Abrams has assembled an all-star baseball law team whose stories illuminate the sometimes uproarious, sometimes ignominous relationship between law and baseball that has made the business of baseball a truly American institution. Leading off in Abrams' lineup is Monte Ward, the hall of Fame pitcher-shortstop and graduate of Columbia Law School who organized the first baseball union. After Curt Flood's valiant, but doomed, effort in federal court, Andy Messersmith strikes out the reserve system in arbitration. And in the ninth inning, pinch-hitter Judge Sonia Sotomayor drives in the winning run of the 1994 major league players' strike. Along the way, Abrams also examines such issues as drug use and gambling, enforcement of contracts, and the rights of owners and managers. The stories he tells are not limited to his official lineup, but include appearances by a host of other charactersfrom baseball magnate Albert Spaulding and New York Knickerbocker Alexander Joy Cartwright to "Acting Commissioner" Bud Selig and Jackie Robinson. And Abrams does not limit himself to the history of baseball and the legal process but also speculates on the implications of the 1996 collective bargaining agreement and those other issueslike intellectual property, eminent domain, and gender equitythat may provide the all-star baseball law stories of the future. About the Author Roger I. Abrams is a major league baseball salary arbitrator who has arbitrated cases involving Ron Darling and Brett Butler. He is also Dean and Richardson Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law and has taught and written in the field of sports law for more than a decade. He is the author of The Money Pitch, also published by Temple University Press. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. "The history of organized baseball and the legal process is a story about people and institutions. This game, which means so much to America, is now a very big business, but that was not always the case. At its creation the enterprise was disorgainzed, almost chaotic. And from the outset, the legal process played an important role in transforming a pastime, a summertime amusement, into a commercial venture, run not by the talented young men who played the game but by the entrepreneurs who supplied the capital. "We can better understand the genesis of organized baseball by focusing on John Montgomery Ward, an important player from the first decades of professional baseball who will serve as the leadoff batter on our All-Star Baseball Law Team. Ward's failed effort to wrest control of the baseball enterprise from the magnates fixed the structure of the business for over a century. Ward's legacythe first unionization of the players and the first and only attempt by players to operate a league of their ownmakes him a notable contributor to the early history of the organized game. "Ward's promise as a baseball player was recognized early; Henry Chadwick, the first chronicler of the game, wrote about Ward in the late 1870s, when the pitcher was still a teenager. Monte Ward began his career on the mound and, like many hurlers on the small squads of that day, played outfield when not pitching. He started in seventy games each of his first two full seasons with the Providence Grays of the National League. Ward is credited with developing one of the first successful curveballs, and on June 17, 1880, he pitched one of the earliest perfect games in baseball history. In 1884, Ward gave up the mound after completing a 158-102 record and began playing infield full time. "But Monte Ward was more than just a great ballplayer. A graduate of Columbia Law School, he had attended night classses while playing for the New York Giants. He spoke five languages, wrote columns for national magazines, and in 1888 published How to Become a Player, a baseball book for youngsters. For his exploits on the diamondhe is the only player in major league history to win one hundred games as a pitcher and collect two thousand hits as a batterWard was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1964. Off the field, as the founder of the first players union and the Players League of 1890, he needed all his skills as a lawyer and a propagandist." From Chapter 1, "The Legal Process at the Birth of Baseball
