America’s Fallen Pastime

How Baseball Players Have Damaged a National Institution

Baseball fans are easy to please. Give them a warm summer day, a cold drink, and their favorite team in the thick of the pennant race and they feel like kings.

Watch them second guess the manager as he pulls the team’s ace pitcher in favor of the young fireballer. Listen to them cheer as he strikes out the opponents’ slugger with the bases loaded, securing the win. Watch them do it all over again the very next day.

Listen to the debates rage.

Who is the best player of all time? Ty Cobb? Babe Ruth? Ted Williams? Mickey Mantle? Ken Griffey Jr.?

Should the designated hitter be abolished?

Should Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame?

Ask them for their favorite baseball moment of the past and prepare to have your ear talked off.

Older fans might choose Bobby Thompson’s “Shot Heard Round the World”, which captured the 1951 National League pennant for the New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers, or Willie Mays’ over-the-shoulder, back-to-the-plate catch to rob Cleveland’s Vic Wertz of an extra-base hit in the 1954 World Series.

Somewhat younger fans might take Carlton Fisk’s frantic waving as his game-winning homer in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series clanged off of Fenway Park’s left field foul pole or the dominance of Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez and the rest of the Big Red Machine during the mid-1970s.

The youngest might call up Baltimore shortstop Cal Ripken Jr’s victory lap around Camden Yards after eclipsing Lou Gehrig’s seemingly unbreakable consecutive games streak or the excitement of St. Louis’ Mark McGwire and the Chicago Cubs’ Sammy Sosa as they relentlessly pursued Roger Maris’ single season home run record.

Take baseball at its simplest, its purist, and it can be almost religious.

Baseball fans only ask for one thing in return. As Braves fan William Correa pleads, “I know baseball has a lot of problems ... but don’t bother the fans with the business stuff.”1

Yet those involved in the sport seem to have tried unrelentingly to sap the fun out of the game in recent years by accentuating its business aspects. Through work stoppages, contract disputes, and boorish behavior, baseball’s powerful leaders have managed to take our national pastime and drag it through the mud. Baseball has gone from being a kid’s game, one played on sandlots and backyards, into being a cold, heartless business played out in board rooms and courthouses.

Baseball has become a business. The roots of this unwanted transformation all trace back to those men who made it the nearly holy sport it was years ago: the players.

Part of the tarnishing of baseball’s image by the players has happened through their on and off the field conduct. Taking advantage of their status as cultural icons, they have committed countless transgressions with no fear of reprimand. They are able to indulge in this type of behavior because the sport has proven over time that, as long as they can hit a curve ball or strike out the side with their fastball, there will always be a place in the game for them.

In the early 1980s these unethical actions were most commonly seen in the form of drug use. The problem first arose when four Kansas City players and Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Steve Howe were suspended for using drugs in 1983. Yet the nation was shocked when, during a drug trial in Pittsburgh in September 1985, St Louis Cardinals first baseman Keith Hernandez claimed that 40 percent of players in the league were cocaine users. His accusations were not only not disproved, but substantiated when Cardinal manager Whitey Herzog admitted ten or eleven members of his team were cocaine users.

This revelation was met by the overwhelming disapproval of fans. In a 1986 poll 86 percent of those responding said they believed athletes used drugs, including heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines. They labeled baseball, along with football, as the league which they believed had the most widespread problem. 57 percent of those surveyed also admitted they were “very concerned” about drug use by athletes.2

But despite the national attention the subject was given in the press, drug use continued on with relatively little circumstance for the offenders. Tigers pitcher Denny McClain and former Cy Young winner LaMarr Hoyt were convicted of drug charges in 1985. Hoyt was sentenced to prison as a result of his conviction. Howe and Mets players Darryl Strawberry and pitcher Dwight Gooden were all suspended a few years later for drug-related offenses, yet all three returned to baseball.

The worst drug offender by far was Howe. Voted Rookie of the Year as a relief pitcher with the Dodgers in 1980, his career took a turn for the worst due to cocaine.

After a series of unexplained absences, team fines, and suspensions in the early 1980s, Howe was disqualified for the entire 1984 season while in treatment for his addiction. When he returned to the Dodgers in 1985, he quickly relapsed and was released by the team. After being picked up by the Minnesota Twins, evidence of repeated drug use surfaced and Howe was released again. Failing to draw interest from any major league teams, he ended up with San Jose Bees, a Class A team in the California League. But his career there was short-lived as well; another incident with police resulted in his suspension from all organized baseball.

After serving out this punishment Howe was signed by the Texas Rangers in 1987. As a condition of allowing Texas to sign the troubled pitcher Rangers general manager Tom Grieve guaranteed Commissioner Peter Ueberroth Howe would start with the club’s top farm club in Oklahoma City and would only be promoted to the big leagues with the expressed approval of Ueberroth. As soon as the deal was done, however, Grieve disregarded the agreement, promoting Howe to the Rangers, an action for which he was fined $250,000. The unsavory act was made even worse when the pitcher admitted he had relapsed again, resulting in yet another suspension. He was given one final reprieve when he was signed by the Yankees in 1991. Howe soon fell off the wagon when he was cited by authorities in Montana for drug possession and dealing. The pitcher incurred no penalties for his latest offense however. In fact, after pleading no contest to the charges against him, he was reinstated and given a big contract at the end of the season.

In all Howe was suspended for drug use seven times, an unofficial and rather dubious record. His incredible behavior seemed unfathomable. How could someone, given repeated opportunities at one of the most highly regarded professions in America, constantly throw it away?

The answer was as simple as the power, both monetarily and professionally, baseball players wielded. Writer Patrick Harrigan diagnosed the situation drug-using athletes felt, saying, “Big salaries meant the players had money to indulge any whim, and sycophants who surrounded them led them to believe that they were Nietzschean figures above the laws that bound normal human beings.”3 Dr. Gary Wadler agreed, stating, “Fame, fortune, free time and feelings of invincibility put athletes at risk.”4 This feeling of being outside of the punishments of the rest of the public did not stop at drugs, but rather have been manifested in other areas as well during the late 1980s and into the present. Strawberry has made endless claims he was going straight, yet has been mired constantly in a long list of personal problems, including alcoholism, a bad marriage, irreligious life, and involving himself with bad companions.5 He was brought up on gun-carrying and wife-beating charges. He was admitted to rehab for a second time during spring training of 1994 due to drug and alcohol problems. He was indicted on tax evasion charges after failing to report money he had earned for signing autographs at memorabilia shows. Yet Strawberry just finished the past season as the starting designated hitter for the world champion New York Yankees.

Boston Red Sox outfielder Will Cordero was charged with domestic battery as well as assault and battery with a dangerous weapon when he used a telephone to beat his wife during an argument in June 1997. As he was being led away by police he threatened in Spanish to kill her.6 In 1999 Cordero played left field and designated hitter for the American League Central-winning Cleveland Indians.

Outfielder Jose Canseco combined his thunderous bat with a short temper during his early playing days with the Oakland Athletics. He possessed a “cocky personality that delighted in his numerous run-ins with traffic cops for late-night, high-speed joy rides ... and liked to put an adventurous face on brawls with his equally volatile wife Esther.”7 He played left field and designated hitter last season with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

Second baseman Roberto Alomar became the center of controversy when he spit in the face of umpire John Hirschbeck in 1996 while with the Baltimore Orioles. When he was given a five game suspension for the act, the major league umpires threatened to strike in response to what they believed to be a very lax penalty. Alomar won his seventh Gold Glove award for outstanding fielding this past season as a member of the Indians.

Yet the greatest example of the apparent ignoring of the rules by baseball players is embodied in Orioles slugger Albert Belle. Called “baseball’s highest-paid sociopath”8, he has been suspended on five different occasions: once for throwing a ball into the stands and hitting a fan, once for using a corked bat, once for running over Milwaukee Brewers second baseman Fernando Vina when he tried to tag him out on a ground ball, and twice for charging the mound. Belle was charged with domestic battery in July 1988. He was forced to undergo counseling for alcoholism. He has been accused of betting on baseball. When a fan who had caught a home run ball of Belle’s offered to exchange it for an autograph, the outfielder cursed at him. He also cursed NBC reporter Hannah Storm when she attempted to interview him after a 1995 World Series game. He attempted to run down trick-or-treaters in his Ford Explorer on Halloween 1995 after they egged his house when he did not give them candy. While in college at Louisiana State University, Belle was benched for throwing equipment and not hustling.

But possibly his most ridiculous stunt was committed while the erratic player was giving an interview with Newsweek during spring training of 1996. During the interview, which he hoped would clear his dirty reputation, several fans approached him to ask him for autographs. He responded by yelling obscenities at them.

Because of his repeatedly damning actions, Belle has become the poster child for what is wrong with sports today. In response to claims that the slugger was really just misunderstood, reporter Mark Bradley for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution argued that “... the cold truth is that we don’t need a ten-dollar technical term to describe him. The tiny word ‘jerk’ will suffice.”9

But these heinous actions by players have usually been met with mere slaps on the wrists, including inconsequential fines and short suspensions, which have little or no effect to deter their willingness to transgress again. One concerned fan voiced his displeasure over this lack of discipline, saying, “There seems to be no standard code among pro athletes that defines decent behavior, and there appears to be an even greater unwillingness for coaches and owners to discipline their star players.”10

Even more alarming than the fact that players such as these are allowed to still compete in the major leagues is the fact that many of them are paid handsomely for their services. Because of his exemplary work at the plate, Belle was the highest paid player in baseball last season, making $11.95 million. The effect of paying players such lofty salaries despite such checkered pasts is that baseball is depicted as a win-at-all-costs sport where character is viewed as a distant second in importance to on-the-field production. It also provides staggering insight into how tremendously player payments have increased in recent years.

Pay for baseball players has skyrocketed since the early days of the game.

Before the 1970s salaries were kept down by owners through two main means. The first of these was the lack of a strong union for players. Because of this all the talent was forced to negotiate their own contracts. Even when the rest of America was experiencing the rise of labor unions designed to give their members increased bargaining power, “... baseball stood resolutely against trends outside it, seeking to freeze its structure at a point in time.”11 The other method was through the reserve clause, a condition which allowed teams to retain their own players without them being able to test their value on the open market, which could drive up the bidding price for their services. Although putting the player at a severe economic disadvantage, the clause was strongly championed by baseball because without it, it was thought, the “free movement of players from club to club ... would eventually destroy both competitive balance and fan loyalty among major league teams.”12

The use of these two tools caused players to be relatively powerless in their negotiations. “As late as the 1960s,” writer G. Edward White states, “... owners were still able to argue that a player reluctant to sign a contract had only the option of quitting baseball and facing considerably reduced economic prospects.”13 Virgil Trucks, who pitched in the big leagues for 17 years with the Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Browns, and Chicago White Sox, summed up the players’ side of the issue when saying, “There were no real negotiations for salaries. There was an abundance of ball players and [the owners] flat out told you and that was it.”14 The system created “a highly personal and paternalistic ownership. Players were like sons who might be rewarded, punished, or ignored.”15 But all of this changed with the appointing of Marvin Miller as executive director of the Players Association in 1966.

Miller was elected into office by the players after they had long been represented by Robert Cannon, “an ownership toady mostly interested in being baseball commissioner.”16 From the very beginning Miller made it clear that he felt the Players Association was a union, “not merely a professional guild with pension concerns” as it had been viewed in the past.17 His appointment reaped immediate dividends for the players when in 1967 he successfully negotiated the raising of the minimum salaries of players from $7,000 to $10,000 as well as increasing the amount of money placed by owners in the pension fund. Around the same time Miller helped create arbitration, a process in which, if players and management disagreed on a salary to be paid on a new contract, the case was taken before an arbitrator to decide which side was in the right.

Miller showed no hesitation to challenge the owners in order to establish the players’ union as a powerful bargaining entity. He had the players boycott spring training in 1969 after the owners did not fulfill their agreement to put $150,000 of revenue from the 1968 All-Star Game in the pension fund. But the argument had less to do with the actual subject matter involved as it did with Miller’s desire to show “a classic test of strength” against the group that had oppressed the players for so long.18

The union head’s number one goal, however, was to have the reserve clause repealed. After failed attempts to negotiate a repeal that would “save the owners some face”19, Miller felt he was pushed into having to take drastic action, something he would not have done had he not been dealing with a group, as former Tiger Jim Hawkins put it, “who wanted things like they were in 1906.”20 With his support, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally agreed to make themselves test cases against the clause.

Messersmith, a pitcher for the Dodgers, had finished the 1974 season with a league-leading 20 wins and .769 winning percentage. Despite his stellar stats, however, he failed to get the contract he wanted from the Dodgers, who simply rolled his previous deal over in 1975. McNally, on the other hand, had already retired after 14 seasons with Baltimore and Montreal prior to the case being proposed. Because of the importance of the case, however, he joined in as a co-plantiff in order to give it more weight.

The grievance was taken before arbitrator Peter Spitz. After deliberating Spitz agreed with the players’ stance on December 23, 1975, stating that players couldn’t be tied to their teams by an automatic turnover of baseball’s reserve clause, abolishing it and opening the way for free agency.

In the years to follow player salaries leapt dramatically. In the twenty years since the ruling the mean salary of a professional baseball player has risen from just under $45,000 to just $1.1 million, an increase of almost twenty-four times.21 The percentage of expenditures which these high salaries make up for a team has increased from 17.6 percent in 1974 to 48.5 percent in 1993.22 Because of the need for more revenue in order to pay these high priced players, teams have compensated by raising ticket prices. The average ticket now costs 87% more than it did in 1990. These rapid ticket hikes have caused more and more fans to be unable to attend games, as seen in a 1997 Associated Press poll which found 55 percent of those surveyed who called themselves baseball “fans” believed the cost of attending games was out of their reach financially.23

Because of the increased cost to themselves as well as the resulting spoiled attitude many players have developed, fans have consistently not approved of the enormous jumps player salaries have made. In a 1986 Sports Illustrated poll 70 percent of those surveyed believed that player earnings were too high. This was compounded by the fact that, when asked to guess the mean salary of baseball players, their estimates averaged $152,000 lower than the actual figure of $371,000.24 At the same time that the players are getting richer, more money than ever is pouring into the pockets of teams. Along with rising ticket prices, TV revenues have increased steadily over the years as well. The contract signed in 1990 increased the amount of money each team would receive from this outlet to $27.2 million as opposed to only $10.7 million in 1985.25 It seems, therefore, that everyone involved in baseball is getting richer. This makes the frequent work stoppages baseball has endured for the past thirty years even more difficult to comprehend.

Strikes became a serious threat to baseball only after Marvin Miller had established the Players Association as a legitimate organization during the late 1960s. Due to the rising power of the players union after this time, more and more concessions were sought by them in an effort to place themselves on an equal playing field with the owners economically. Management, however, was not willing to give up their stronger position without a fight. Continuously adverse to change, owners struggled to keep their bargaining advantage while the players tried to close the gap. This constant struggle has led to several significant showdowns, including four work stoppages between 1972 and 1994. In the eyes of the fans these battles of the wealthy only helped to further reduce the prestige of baseball.

The first players strike occurred in 1972 when, after the owners signed a new four year, $70 million TV contract , the Players Association demanded to have team contributions to the pension fund increased one million dollars to $6.5 million. The owners, who in their minds had already given too much to the union in recent years, vowed not to give in to the demands. Their resistance was only intensified since the pension fund already had a surplus. Cardinals owner Gus Busch responded to the insistence by saying angerly, “[The owners are] not going to give another goddamn cent. And if they want to strike, let them strike.”26 The players obliged Busch’s invitation.

The strike quickly came to an end when it became evident that as strong as the owners purported to be, the players were stronger. Harrigan concluded that Miller, who placed the business success of his clients ahead of the game itself, “was not about to yield points for ‘the good of the game’.”27 When the owners realized the unity the players had, they gave in to their demands.

The press bashed both sides for their behavior in causing the strike, scolding them for thinking of money before the game itself. Hawkins said, “ ... players placed more importance on their pension plan than they did on the game.”28 Writer Joe Falls said shortly before the strike occurred, “[Miller] has woven a spell over the players that [they] themselves do not fully understand.”29

The claim was a valid one. Miller admitted later, “The players and the union were never the same again.”30 The victory gave the union their first real sense of power. Now that they had tasted it, it was inevitable that they would thirst for more.

In 1981 the owners had a strong desire to do away with free agency, a practice they had already seen ill effects from in the form of rising salaries and increased player movement. But, because the Messersmith-McNally decision had been upheld in several court decisions, they held no real bargaining position. The owners, hungry to recapture the power they had already lost, were still willing to take the risk. Their willingness was partially fueled by their belief that the players would again not strike in order to protect their power, but would instead cave in. In this conclusion the owners proved to be wrong.

The ensuing strike lasted for fifty days and canceled 706 games, causing the season to have to be split into two parts. When the dust had settled, no changes had been made. But the stoppage had cost the owners and players deeply in the pocketbook to the tune of $72 million and $28 million respectively.

Like the 1972 strike, however, the public relations damage was much worse than the monetary costs.Time called the strike “an outrage, a form of cultural terrorism ... It has subverted that sense of the mystique.” President of Yale University and future baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti said in a New York Times piece, “The strike is utter foolishness ... a triumph of greed.” To make matters worse, the fact that nothing practical came out of the strike did not help either side explain why the stoppage had occured.

The 1985 strike was only a small hiccup in terms of the amount of games lost. Despite fan polls stating that a four-to-one majority of Americans believed it “would be totally unfair to the fans to have baseball shut down in midseason”,31 owners instituted a work stoppage in the hopes of curtailing the arbitration system and starting a salary cap. The strike only lasted two days and was settled when the salary cap issue was dropped in exchange for the raising of the arbitration qualification from two years of major league experience to three.

On the surface the owners had won: they had helped themselves while doing no damage to the game among public opinion. But what no one knew was the owners had decided to attempt to, in lieu of a salary cap, try to keep salaries down and stop free agency by circumventing the rules.

After the 1985 season 62 players filed for free agency, yet only five, all of whom played for teams which had no interest in resigning them, received offers from other teams. The situation was further accentuated after the following season when even fewer outside offers were made to the pool of 79 players who made themselves eligible for free agency. One notable example was Tiger pitcher Jack Morris. Despite having accumulated the most victories and innings of any pitcher during the decade, he was forced to resign with the Tigers after no other teams made him offers.

It did not take a genius to know that something was going on amongst the owners. After the players union filed several grievances, arbitrators Thomas Roberts and George Nicolau found in three separate decisions that owners had been guilty of collusion in order to keep free agents on their original teams and to maintain salary levels. As restitution for the offenses the owners were forced to pay $280 million to the players. But the distrust that had been caused would prove to be much more damaging than any monetary punishment in the coming years.

Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent stated at a press conference on February 21, 1991, that, given its current economic situation and internal strife between players and owners, “baseball [was] poised for a catastrophe [which] might not be far off.”32 The commissioner proved to be prophetic as the 1994 strike proved to be the worst in baseball history.

Before the strike 1994 was shaping up to be a record year. Matt Williams of the San Francisco Giants, Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners and Frank Thomas of the Chicago White Sox all were threatening to break Roger Maris’ single season home run record. In addition Thomas was also threatening Babe Ruth’s season records for walks, runs scored and total bases. Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres had a good shot at becoming the first player since Ted Williams to hit .400 in 1941. Teams were on pace to hit more home runs and score more runs than had been tallied since 1930.

But instead of witnessing a historic final push for these numerous milestones, baseball fans were greeted with another strike on August 12. Then the unthinkable happened: faced with a complete impasse in negotiations, the season was canceled on September 14. For the first time since 1904, there would be no World Series.

As Vincent had had the vision to see, the stage had been set for a possible monumental conflict due to a complete distrust between players and owners harbored from previous negotiations. The collusion cases in 1985 and 1986 had “embittered the players, who had long distrusted their employers.”33 The owners in turn felt they had lost in all recent negotiations and they wanted to reverse that trend. After 1990 Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig and Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf concluded that 1994, the year the collective bargaining agreement would run out, “was going to be the year and they’d have to do things differently ... [The owners] needed to get their way this time.”34 When asked how they would get their way, Reinsdorf posed an ominous answer: “You do it by taking a position and telling [the players] we’re not going to play unless we make a deal and [by] being prepared not to play one or two years if you have to.”35

Because both sides had decided to take a hard stance to avoid losing any ground, all negotiation efforts failed. Even when federal arbitrators were brought in and Congress threatened to repeal baseball’s antitrust exemption, neither side would budge. A resolution was only reached when an unfair labor practices complaint filed on behalf of the players by the National Labor Relations Board resulted in U.S. District Judge Sonia Sotomayor granting an injunction on March 30, 1995 which allowed the players to go back to work. After all the damage the players and owners had done due to their internal struggles, nothing had changed.

The press coverage on both sides was brutal from the time a strike was threatened until well after it ended. The Associated Press called the strike a “dispute between two gluttonous sides”.36 Harrigan claims, “Never before has the naked power struggle between the players and owners been so needless and so self-destructive.”37

The Detroit Free Press lamented, “The owners live such fortunate lives; the players live such fortunate lives. They should have been able to solve this.”38 When the season was canceled, the Free Press printed a tombstone with “R.I.P” etched into it.

Fan polls done at the time show a population fed up with the business of baseball. 70 percent of Americans thought players were “more interested in money than the game”. 79 percent said labor disputes had “taken the fun out of the game”. A

majority of those polled said they were “disgusted” with the strike. At the end of the 1995 season 56 percent of fans had a “less favorable” view of professional sports than they had had during the previous summer. A Reuters/ABC poll found that the number of people that labeled themselves “baseball fans” had declined from 44 percent in 1993 to 28 percent in 1995. The sport which had been voted America’s favorite in 1960 and came in second behind football in 1972 dropped to third behind basketball in 1995. In the same poll only 12 percent of fans voted baseball as their favorite, a drop from 34 percent in 1961 and 24 percent in 1971.39

More than in any other previous work stoppage, fan sentiment was wholly negative towards baseball. But instead of anger being the main feeling set forth by the public, the general reaction was hurt. It was the words of a 73-year-old woman who had grown up playing baseball in her backyard with her brothers and grandfather that best summed up the prevailing fan response: “Baseball has lost its soul and it lost my heart.”40 It was quite clear that the emotional wounds that had been caused by baseball’s selfishness would not heal quickly.

This was further evidenced by the brief downturn in fan involvement when the 1995 season commenced. Attendance dropped 20 million, or 28 percent, from 1993 despite attempts by teams to draw fans back using discounted tickets and massive advertising campaigns. The TV ratings for the All-Star Game were the lowest in 28 years while the number of votes for the All-Star teams plummeted from 14 million in 1994 to 5.4 million in 1995. The discontent shown by fans both through their comments and their staying away from the stadiums made the 1994 strike seem like an almost lethal blow for baseball. In the strike of 1994, “No one won. Baseball lost.”41

Baseball’s complete baring of its hideous business disagreements has shown that in the past twenty years the enjoyment of fans and the preservation of the game have taken a backseat to the pursuit by the sport’s hierarchy for the almighty dollar.

Players, despite averaging over a million dollars per year, demand payment for autographs. Players such as Albert Belle have become mercenaries, signing for whatever team will give them the highest fee regardless of team loyalty. Earlier suspicions as to whether the love of the game played any part in today’s baseball were answered resoundingly in 1994. The conclusion afterward was shocking, but crystal clear: “By 1994 everyone knew baseball was a business. They were shocked that it seemed to be only a business.”42

Yet despite all of the grievances, arguments and unethical behavior which surrounds baseball, the popularity of the game itself has not noticeably been affected. Even when fans didn’t go to games in 1995, the ratings for local TV and ESPN broadcasts remained stable. The last four World Series games still managed to be in the ratings top 10 for the week.43 After the attendance decline in 1995, figures rose 11 percent in 1996 and another 17.6 percent in 1997.44 By 1996 baseball had moved back ahead of basketball as America’s second favorite sport.45 This quick resurgence proved that the displeasure fans felt after the 1994 strike was not directed at the game itself, but at the players that had brought the sport down.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer Furman Bisher wrote in a July 25, 1985, article before that year’s strike that “fans won’t stop going to ball games anymore than tavern habitues will stop drinking beer because the brewers are on strike.”46 He was right then and he is right now: no matter what players ever do to try to take away from the game’s glory and mystique, baseball will always survive.

Bibliography

Works Cited

Bisher, Furman. “Striking is what spoiled baseball players seem to do best.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. July 29, 1985: pp E1.

Blount, Rachel. “Sports Poll: 71 percent of adults are fans.” The Atlanta Journal- Constitution. June 4, 1986: pp C6.

Bradley, Mark. “Forget all the psychobabble, Belle just a jerk.” The Atlanta Journal- Constitution. May 31, 1996: pp H1.

“Cordero arrested on assault charges.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. June 12, 1997: pp F5.

Dewey, Donald, and Nicholas Acocella. The Biographical History of Baseball. New York, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc, 1995.

Harrigan, Patrick. The Detroit Tigers: Club and Community, 1945-1995. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

“Harris Poll: Public favors players over owners.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. August 5, 1985: pp D6.

Sullivan, Tim. “All work and no plagues make Albert dull boy.” The Cincinnati Enquirer. February 21, 1997: C1.

Tucker, Tim. “Fans come back as baseball puts labor management rift aside.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. February 19, 1996: pp D2.

White, G. Edward. Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself: 1903- 1953. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996.

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