Major League Rebels: Baseball Battles over Workers' Rights and American Empire

Review\nSince baseball’s inception as a professional sport, the entities that control it have sought to wring the maximum profit from the game, argue Elias and Dreier. Their book outlines myriad ways in which MLB team owners and league officials have manipulated laws and ignored morality in favor of money—often at players’ expense. Elias and Dreier also recount moments when players have countered major-league machinations. For instance, in the 1880s, hall-of-famer John Montgomery Ward organized possibly the first professional sports players union, in an ultimately failed attempt to secure fair wages for himself and his peers; the union hoped to do away with the reserve clause that forever tied players to a given team. Ninety years later, All-Star center fielder Curt Flood took a bold stance that helped bring about free agency and a new, stronger players union, headed by the extremely competent Marvin Miller. The book also examines the MLB’s decades of alignment with and tacit support of the U.S. military. Elias and Drier have exceptional insight on behind-the-scenes labor fights in the MLB; a fine depiction of capitalist avarice. A must for baseball fans. ― Library Journal\nYou're not seeing the whole game until you read Major League Rebels, a fascinating, eye-opening history of the real heroes of baseball, the ones who stood up to racists, war-mongers and their own greedy owners. -- Robert Lipsyte, New York Times sportswriter, Emmy-winning host of WNET/Thirteen, “The Eleventh Hour,” author of Heroes of Baseball, The Center Fielder, and The Accidental Sportswriter\nThis wonderful book by veteran baseball writers and political scientists Robert Elias and Peter Dreier offers a fascinating account of the historic rebels who challenged the labor exploitation and corporate monopoly of professional baseball. What makes this book such a good read is that the story is told principally of the players and others who fought team owners, the commissioner’s office, and corporate scoundrels in the decades-long struggle for fair pay, the abolition of the reserve clause, and social justice.
-- George Gmelch, author of Inside Pitch, Playing with Tigers, In the Ballpark, and Baseball Beyond Our Borders\nMajor League Rebels is as radical and important a baseball book as I’ve read in a long time. It restores a history the minders of baseball would soon have us forget: battles over not only race, gender, and sexuality but also over worker rights and the uses of baseball as a tool for U.S. empire. -- Dave Zirin, host of Edge of Sports; author of A People’s History of Sports in the U.S., Game Over, What’s My Name, Fool?, Bad Sports, and The Kaepernick Effect\nIn Major League Rebels, Elias and Dreier focus on the fascinating and often forgotten stories of the players, managers, and promoters who challenged Major League Baseball’s labor, financial, and political policies. -- Robert Fitts, author of Issei Baseball, Mashi, Wally Yonamine, and Banzai Baseball\nBaseball began in the cities, from a nostalgic longing for an agrarian paradise more ideal than real. That idealism—a wish for fairness and harmony on a level playing field—animated all that came after and is splendidly delineated in Robert Elias and Peter Dreier’s new book. Who is in, who is out, and who gets to decide: that has been the banner under which all baseball's rebels have marched.
-- John Thorn, Official Historian, Major League Baseball\nMost sports fans today know about Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James and how they have stood up for equal treatment for Blacks. They don’t know that there’s a long pedigree of professional athletes who have fought for player rights and worker rights for all Americans. Major League Rebels compellingly tells the story of these heroes from the 1870s to the 2020s and how their struggles have helped shape U.S. culture and politics.
-- Andrew Zimbalist, author of Baseball and Billions, In the Best Interests of Baseball?, May the Best Team Win, and Circling the