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Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920
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Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920 Hardcover - 1994

by Robert F. Burk


From the publisher

America's national pastime has been marked from its inception by bitter struggles between owners and players over profit, power, and prestige. In this book, the first installment of a highly readable, comprehensive labor history of baseball, Robert Burk describes the evolution of the ballplaying work force: its ethnocultural makeup, its economic position, and its battles for a place at the table in baseball's decision-making structure.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the growing popularity of baseball as a spectator sport and the dramatic upsurge of America's urban population created conditions that led to franchise competition, the development of rival leagues, and trade wars, in turn triggering boom-and-bust cycles, franchise bankruptcies, and league mergers. According to Burk, players repeatedly tried to use these circumstances to better their economic positions by playing one team off against another. Their successes proved short-lived, however, because their own internal divisions, exploited by management, undercut attempts to create collective-bargaining institutions. By 1920, owners still held the upper hand in the labor-management battle, but as today's sports pages show, owners did not secure a long-term solution to their labor problems.


"Burk proves that when it comes to baseball's money issues, the more things change--the more they stay the same.--USA Today Baseball Weekly

"A lively, highly readable volume filled with fascinating anecdotes. . . . The book will appeal to both the serious student of business history and the layman with merely an interest in the game itself.--Business History

America's national pastime has been marked from its inception by bitter struggles between owners and players over profit, power, and prestige. In this labor history of baseball from its beginning to 1920, Robert Burk describes the evolution of the ballplaying work force and recounts its battles for a place in baseball's decision-making structure. Tracing the development of franchise competition, rival leagues, and trade wars--and the boom-and-bust cycles, franchise bankruptcies, and league mergers they triggered in turn--he explores the off-field acrimony that characterized the sport's labor-management relations.

Details

  • Title Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920
  • Author Robert F. Burk
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 302
  • Publisher The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC
  • Date 1994
  • ISBN 9780807821220
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Never Just a Game : Players, Owners, and American Baseball To 1920
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Never Just a Game : Players, Owners, and American Baseball To 1920

by Burk, Robert F

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Never Just a Game : Players, Owners, and American Baseball To 1920
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Never Just a Game : Players, Owners, and American Baseball To 1920

by Burk, Robert F

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9780807821220
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Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920.

by BURK, Robert F.

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First edition, octavo, pp. xv, 284. Black and white illustrations. Very good in the publisher's burgundy cloth with silver spine lettering. Dust jacket very good and ensconced in a clear sheet of archival mylar.
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Never Just a Game : Players, Owners, and American Baseball To 1920

Never Just a Game : Players, Owners, and American Baseball To 1920

by Robert F. Burk

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ISBN 13
9780807821220
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University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Hardcover. Good. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less.Dust jacket quality is not guaranteed.
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Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920
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Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920

by Robert F. Burk

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NEVER JUST A GAME: PLAYERS, OWNERS, AND AMERICAN BASEBALL TO 1920
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NEVER JUST A GAME: PLAYERS, OWNERS, AND AMERICAN BASEBALL TO 1920

by Burk, Robert F.

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Never Just a Game

Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920

by Robert F. Burk

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ISBN 13
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Never Just a Game. Players, Owners & American Baseball to 1920

Never Just a Game. Players, Owners & American Baseball to 1920

by Burk, Robert F.

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Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994 First edition hardcover in dust jacket. 284 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliographical essay, index. Fine/Fine.
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Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920
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Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920

by Robert F. Burk

  • Used
  • Hardcover
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Used:Good
Binding
Hardcover
ISBN 13
9780807821220
ISBN 10
0807821225
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Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920.
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Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920.

by BURK, Robert F.

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  • Hardcover
Condition
Used - Very Good
Binding
Hardcover
ISBN 13
9780807821220
ISBN 10
0807821225
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Description:
First printing, octavo, pp. xv, 284. Black and white illustrations. Very good in the publisher's burgundy cloth with silver spine lettering. Dust jacket very good and ensconced in a clear sheet of archival mylar.
Item Price
£18.03
£3.20 shipping to USA