Ivan R. Dee
Pages: 336
Trim: 6½ x 9¼
978-1-56663-869-2 • Hardback • March 2012 • $66.00 • (£51.00)
978-1-56663-905-7 • eBook • March 2012 • $62.50 • (£48.00)
Award-winning writer and researcher, Daniel R. Levitt is the author of several critically acclaimed books on baseball, including Ed Barrow: the Bulldog who Built the Yankees' First Dynasty and Paths to Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got That Way, with Mark Armour which won the Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research Award. Levitt is a longtime member of the SABR, the baseball research organization, and a past president of the Minnesota chapter. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two children.
Preface
Dramatis Personae
Chapter 1: The Opening Salvo
Chapter 2: America Meets Sports Leagues
Chapter 3: Rumblings
Chapter 4: Going Major
Chapter 5: A Real Players Union
Chapter 6: The Battle for Chicago
Chapter 7: Organized Baseball Responds
Chapter 8: The Season Opens: On the Field and in the Courts
Chapter 9: The Struggle Continues
Chapter 10: A Possible Settlement
Chapter 11: Player Reinforcements
Chapter 12: Antitrust Attack
Chapter 13: Owner Reinforcements
Chapter 14: A Long Summer
Chapter 15: The Final Countdown
Chapter 16: Aftermath
Notes
Sources
Almost a century has passed since Major League Baseball faced its last serious challenge from an upstart league, but the short-lived Federal League left its mark. Consisting of eight teams located in Midwestern and Northeastern cities, the Federal League launched in late 1913 to compete with the American and National Leagues (which were suffering their own growing pains at the time) and lasted two seasons. Backed by wealthy owners and an aggressive business strategy that included selling public shares in some cities, the organization struggled to gain players and profits. Award-winning writer Levitt (Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees’ First Dynasty) offers a richly detailed account of how the battle between the leagues played out in the press and in the courts. Not only was the Federal League responsible for introducing the first successful labor union to the game, its failure resulted in the landmark 1922 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act did not apply to Major League Baseball. Despite such accomplishments, the Federal League didn’t help its cause by striking a game from the standings “because an umpire made a bad decision at first base,” considering a rule change to allow a walk after three balls instead of four, and permitting owners of some teams to bankroll financially struggling competitors. Levitt’s thorough research makes for . . . rewarding reading.
— Publishers Weekly
In this compelling narrative, Levitt uncovers the economic and legal battles between Organized Baseball and its last rival, the Federal League of 1913-15. Anyone seeking to understand how Major League Baseball (or the other U.S. sports leagues) came to be structured as the closed monopolies that they are today will benefit from reading Levitt's excellent book.
— Andrew Zimbalist, Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College
Daniel L. Levitt's book on the Federal League is the best work on the subject up to now. Thoroughly researched and well-written, it is particularly impressive in its detailed narrative and analysis of the corporate, financial, and legal aspects of the Federal League's potent challenge to the two established major leagues—a challenge that, while ultimately unsuccessful, eventuated in the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark exemption of Organized Baseball from the federal antitrust laws.
— Charles C. Alexander, Ohio University
If we recall the Federal League today it is for its last gasp: the Supreme Court decision of 1922 that provided Major League Baseball with an antitrust exemption that has endured to the present day. But the story of how it began, briefly flourished, frayed, and collapsed, is a fascinating and instructive tale on many fronts. No one has ever told it more compellingly than Dan Levitt; I cannot recommend his book highly enough.
— John Thorn, Official Historian of Major League Baseball
Anyone who wants to advance beyond the stage of fandom to understand what it takes to establish and run professional baseball would do well to read Mr. Levitt’s fascinating book.
— New York Journal of Books
Dan Levitt has produced a well-researched, well-written account of the machinations of both the Federal League and Organized Baseball as they challenged each other to compete in the same venue. This is not dry, legal stuff but an entertaining and informative recreation of the rough and tumble times of the American game.
— The Past In Review
Author Daniel R. Levitt, in his new book The Battle That Forged Modern Baseball, offers up the most authoritative account yet of the short-lived league.
— The Capital Times
The Battle that Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy. . . tell[s] an inherently complicated story in a direct and understandable manner without dumbing it down. . . . This is a work of serious historical scholarship[.] . . . The case presented is highly persuasive that the Federal League challenge, though largely forgotten, was indeed not only a lively chapter in baseball’s history, but one with deep and lasting importance. For the serious student of the development of the organizational framework of baseball as a business, Levitt’s work should be required reading.
— NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture