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Bottom of the Ninth

Recently received in the mail a new book by Michael Shapiro entitled, Bottom of the Ninth, Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball From Itself. It's the fascinating story of the late 1950's, early 60s and the Dodgers have left Brooklyn, the Giants have left the Polo Grounds and cities all across flyover country are besieging baseball for teams. The Yankees are alone in New York and a New York lawyer named William A. Shea and Branch Rickey conceive the idea for a third major league called the Continental League.

Rickey, most well-known for signing Jackie Robinson was a baseball genius and a man always ahead of his time. He went about collecting millionaires around the country for his new league, not realizing that most of them were about landing a team in the existing two leagues. Still Rickey had some ideas that had baseball adopted them at the time might have headed off the rise of professional football, which at that time, was little more than something to use baseball stadiums in the fall. Among his most enduring ideas and perhaps the single best idea that baseball should have adopted then and should adopt now, was that all television money should be shared equally. Why shades of Pete Rozelle, Rickey realized that a league is as dependent on its weakest franchises as it is on its strongest. Most fans don't know how well the game is played as long as it is played competitively. A principle which guided the NFL to its present day dominance.

As I get further into the book, I'll be back with more, but I can already recommend it if you have the slightest interest in either baseball or sports business. Shapiro tells a good story and he tells it well.

You can find an interview with Michael Shapiro about the book at the Gothamist blog, here.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on May 25, 2009 (boomark / email).