Much More Than a Game

“Burk’s study of the struggles between players and management over access to job opportunities, rights of workers, and the administration of the industry has resulted in an excellent, detailed historical analysis.” — Business History Review

“Burk’s Much More Than a Game, read in conjunction with his earlier volume, Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, & American Baseball to 1920, offers the most complete and accessible history of the business side of baseball currently available. . . . A valuable, up-to-date synthesis of labor relations in baseball, a history that people will want to revisit.” — Journal of American History

“The second and concluding volume in Burk’s business history of baseball covers the seismic changes that have affected the game, from the tenure of judge Landis through modern issues that continue to cause confrontation between ownership and the players.” — USA Today Baseball Weekly

“Comprehensive, well-written, and with valuable notes and a bibliographic essay, this book is a rich addition to the literature on the social and economic history of our national pastime for scholar and fan alike.” — CHOICE

“As he chronicles the history of baseball’s labor movement . . . Burk focuses on the major people . . . a focus that significantly animates his heavily detailed narrative.” — Publishers Weekly

“In these days of escalating salaries and costs and the friction that exists between players and management, this book provides scholarly background. Libraries featuring comprehensive sports and/or labor relations collections should consider.” — Library Journal

“As in his earlier Never Just a Game, Robert Burk has provided a thoroughly researched and provocative history of labor-management relations in baseball. Anybody with a serious interest in the long and complex history of the baseball business will have to read this book.” — Charles C. Alexander, Ohio University

“Burk has given us a penetrating and savvy history of baseball’s turbulent labor relations. Those seeking insight into the upcoming 2000–2001 round of collective bargaining would do well to start with Much More Than a Game.” — Andrew Zimbalist, author of Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime