Stee-Rike Four!: What's Wrong with the Business of Baseball?

by Daniel Marburger

Overview

When major league baseball cancelled its 1994 season following a player strike, fans were shocked that the national pastime could be brought to a standstill by a collective bargaining dispute. The strike was largely responsible for bringing the economics of the game into sports discussions and raising questions about the business of baseball. Will players' rising salaries destroy baseball? How will revenue-sharing and luxury taxes affect competitive balance? Should taxpayers subsidize their local team? This volume answers the basic questions about the economics of the sport, from salary arbitration to baseball's antitrust exemption, in a clear style geared for readers with no formal background in economics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275957063
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/25/1997
Series:	Contributions in Women's Studies; 159
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

DANIEL R. MARBURGER is Associate Professor of Economics at Arkansas State University. He has published several articles on the economics of baseball.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction by Daniel R. Marburger
Collective Bargaining and Baseball
Whatever Happened to the "Good Ol' Days"? by Daniel R. Marburger
Why Can't Baseball Resolve Its Differences in the Off-Season? by Daniel R. Marburger
Free Agency, Salary Arbitration, and Player Salaries
Will Rising Salaries Destroy Baseball? by James Richard Hill
Free Agency and Competitive Balance by John L. Fizel
Final Offer Salary Arbitration (FOSA)—a.k.a. Franchise Owners' Self-Annihilation by James B. Dworkin
Salary Arbitration in Major League Baseball: A Case of Dog Wags Tail! by William H. Kaempfer
Baseball's Quick-Fix Solutions
The Salary Cap and the Luxury Tax: Affirmative Action Programs for Weak-Drawing Franchises by James Quirk
Increased Revenue-sharing for Major League Baseball? by Lawrence Hadley and Elizabeth Gustafson
Whither Baseball After the Strike of 1994? by James D. Whitney
The Antitrust Issue
Why Baseball's Antitrust Exemption Must Go by Bruce Johnson
Preserve Baseball's Antitrust Exemption, or, Why the Senators are Out of Their League by William F. Shughart II
The Future of Baseball
The Stadium Mess by Rodney Fort
Baseball in the Twenty-First Century by Andrew Zimbalist
Concluding Remarks by Daniel R. Marburger
Index

Editorial Reviews

Explains economic and business aspects of the game in plain language. Part I provides historical background on collective bargaining in major league baseball, and Part II deals with free agency and salary issues. Part III examines issues such as revenue-sharing, salary caps, and luxury taxes, and Part IV contrasts opposing perspectives on baseball's antitrust exemption. Part V looks toward the game's future, with chapters on third party financing of stadiums and antitrust. Many of the chapters were written before the labor agreement that ended the baseball strike of 1994. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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