Hastily formed in 1883 as a rival, third major league, the Union Association upset the moguls of the baseball world and disrupted the status quo. Backed by Henry V. Lucas, an impetuous 26-year-old millionaire from St. Louis, the UA existed for one chaotic season in 1884. This first full-length history of the Union Association tells the captivating story of the league's brief and enigmatic existence. Lucas recruited a wild mix of disgruntled stars, misfits, crooks, has-beens, drunks, and the occasional spectator--along with a future star or two. The result was a bizarre experiment that sowed both turmoil and hope before fading into oblivion.

From Major League Baseball's inception in the 1880s through World War II, team owners enjoyed monopolistic control of the industry. Despite the players' desire to form a viable union, every attempt to do so failed. The labor consciousness of baseball players lagged behind that of workers in other industries, and the public was largely in the dark about labor practices in baseball. In the mid-1960s, star players Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale staged a joint holdout for multiyear contracts and much higher salaries. Their holdout quickly drew support from the public; for the first time, owners realized they could ill afford to alienate fans, their primary source of revenue. Baseball's Power Shift chronicles the growth and development of the union movement in Major League Baseball and the key role of the press and public opinion in the players' successes and failures in labor-management relations. Swanson focuses on the most turbulent years, 1966 to 1981, which saw the birth of the Major League Baseball Players Association as well as three strikes, two lockouts, Curt Flood's challenge to the reserve clause in the Supreme Court, and the emergence of full free agency. To defeat the owners, the players' union needed support from the press, and perhaps more importantly, the public. With the public on their side, the players ushered in a new era in professional sports when salaries skyrocketed and fans began to care as much about the business dealings of their favorite team as they do about wins and losses. Swanson shows how fans and the media became key players in baseball's labor wars and paved the way for the explosive growth in the American sports economy.

Marvin Miller became the first executive director of the newly formed Major League Baseball Players Association. He recounts his experience in dealing with club owners and his success in winning a new role for the players. He helped virtually end the system that bound an athlete to one team forever and thereby raised salaries enormously. formed

For those who believe in collective bargaining and who share the author's passion for baseball in a complicated world, Getting On Base captures the author's love of baseball , once shared with his father, a minor league second baseman playing in Peoria, Illinois. The labor lawyer/arbitrator and former teacher of constitutional law argues that what happens to minor leaguers is not fair. It's time for a new union to step up to the plate and challenge the MLBPA and major league owners.

The Union Printers National Baseball League annual tournament featured teams that represented different cities with local chapters of the International Typographical Union, a leading national labor union for those working at newspapers and other print media. The first tournament was held in New York City in 1908, and different cities hosted the event in subsequent years.

This painstakingly researched book by Douglas J. Gladstone examines the plight of 874 Major League Baseball players who played between 1947 and 1979, all with brief trials in the majors, careers figuratively "just long enough to drink a cup of coffee." Since 1980, Major League Baseball players have needed one day of service credit for health benefits and 43 days of service credit to be eligible for a retirement allowance, but those former ballplayers who played during the 1947-1979 seasons were not included retroactively in the amended vesting requirement, and so receive no pensions for the time they gave to our national pastime. These men, the author suggests, have gulped bitter cups of coffee. In his careful examination of this issue, which includes many interviews with former players and some poignant stories of their plight, Gladstone asks his readers to examine our national relationship to sports and its heroes, as well as our relationships with those who precede us in the game of life. A lifelong baseball fan, DOUGLAS J. GLADSTONE is a journalist by training, whose published articles have appeared in the Chicago Sun Times, Baseball Digest and the San Diego Jewish World, among others. This is his first book. DAVE MARASH (Foreword) has been a working journalist for more than 50 years. Best known for his 16 years as a correspondent for ABC News Nightline, Marash won Emmy Awards for his coverage of the wars in Nicaragua and Bosnia, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the explosion that downed TWA Flight 800. He anchored the opening season of Baseball Tonight on ESPN and did play-by-play coverage of the New York Knicks and Rangers.

Many assume incorrectly that confrontations between baseball's players and management began in the 1960s when the Major League Baseball Players Association started showing signs of becoming a union to be reckoned with. (The tensions of the 1960s prompted the owners to form the Player Relations Committee to deal with them and in February 1968, the two groups negotiated the game's first Basic Agreement.) The struggles between players and management to gain the upper hand did not, however, start there--the two groups have had numerous clashes since baseball began (as well as since the 1968 agreement). There have been various periods of conflict and peace throughout the century and before. This work traces the history of the relationship between players and management from baseball's early years to the new challenges and developing tensions that led to spring training lockouts instigated by the owners and to player strikes in 1972, 1981, 1985, and 1994. An important agreement in 1996 brought labor peace once again. The future of player-management relations is also covered.