Download Baseball's Power Shift: How the Players Union, the Fans, and the Media Changed American Sports Culture AudioBook Free
From Major League Baseball's inception in the 1880s through World Conflict II, team owners savored monopolistic control of the industry. Despite the players' desire to form a viable union, every try to do so failed. Within the mid-1960s, celebrity players Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale staged a joint holdout for multiyear agreements and much higher earnings. Their holdout quickly drew support from the public; for the first time, owners became aware they could ill afford to alienate enthusiasts, their primary source of revenue. Baseball's Electricity Move chronicles the growth and development of the union movements in Major League Baseball and the main element role of the press and open public judgment in the players' successes and failures in labor-management relations. Swanson focuses on the most turbulent years, 1966 to 1981, which found the labor and birth of the Major League Baseball Players Association as well as three hits, two lockouts, Curt Flood's obstacle to the reserve clause in the Supreme Court docket, and the introduction of full free company. Swanson shows how enthusiasts and the multimedia became key players in baseball's labor wars and paved the way for the explosive growth in the American sports economy.
