Fallon Fox faces more challenges outside the ring than inside. (courtesy of fallonfoxmma.com)

Throughout the physical trials and tribulations of MMA fighting, fighter Fallon Fox has encountered a level of difficulty many of her competitors haven’t had to contend with.

Fox came out earlier this year as a transgendered woman. This has created quite a bit of controversy, as few viewers truly understand the implications of her gender.

UFC Fighter Mike Mitrione called Fox “a lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak” insisting, “he’s chromosomally a man. He had a gender change, not a sex change. He’s still a man.” The UFC has officially renounced these remarks, even suspending Mitrione, but what does the science say?

Fox had to take testosterone blockers before her transition. The average amount of testosterone in a man’s system is 300-1,000 nanograms, while the average woman has between 10 and 70 nanograms. Fox has revealed her testosterone levels are typically around 7.

Currently, she continues to take oral estrogen. At this point, if Fox would stop taking the estrogen, she would essentially experience postmenopausal hormone levels. Her testosterone wouldn’t rise.

With her higher levels of estrogen and lower testosterone, Fox finds it more difficult to drop weight–something that can be vital for MMA fighters. In fact, in her six years of transition, most professionals would say all physical advantages that Fox would have had as a man fighting women in MMA are gone, including strength, speed and bone density.

Gender roles have always been a strong part of the lens through which we view sports. Some sports are more or less manly than others, some are inappropriate for women, men must compete against men, and women must compete against women. So if a person later becomes either a man or a woman, what has changed? When does it change? Should it change?

Embodied Masculinities in Global Sport is a textbook in the works that takes a look at how these views of gender and masculinity affect our view of sports, as well as how our view of sport affects our ideas on gender and manhood. It tackles this in a worldwide perspective, including views from New Zealand, Uruguay, Brazil, the U.S., and others.

Sometimes, these issues are obvious, at the forefront of the public view, like Fox. Occasionally, though, our ideals are so embedded into tradition that we may not even consider them. But the fact remains: sport and gender are closely linked in all societies.

Fox’s biggest challenges may not even be in the ring— in order to be successful as an athlete, she is going to have to fight outside her bouts. The resistance she will doubtless face holds the potential to further strengthen her. It’s just a matter of facing outside opponents like Mitrione who insist, “[s]he’s obviously got some mental issues and wants to beat up on women.”

As of now, the Florida Boxing Commission shows no signs of revoking Fox’s license, and fighters are still entering bouts with her. But one thing’s for sure: Fox has opened a national dialogue about transgendered athletes and gender in sport. And the people are talking.

Fans change their clothes, rather than their seats, at Diamondbacks series opener (photo courtesy of arizonasports.com).

In a box seat just behind home plate, several fans watching the Arizona Diamondbacks battle it out in their series opener were asked to take it off. The fans, in prime viewing area, were wearing Los Angeles Dodgers gear.

Their seats, $3,250-$3,500 box seats, are consistently shown in photos, videos, and any shots of the batters. Anyone watching the game would have noticed the blue and white instead of Arizona’s grey and maroon. Ken Kendrick, a Diamondbacks owner, noticed this and requested the group either change seats or change clothes.

Rather than relocate to another box, where they were told they would be reimbursed for the difference, the fans elected to keep their seats and change into the Diamondbacks gear that was brought to them. This shift was noticed by many and is under much consideration: Was Ken Kendrick stepping over the line in requesting a change? Sure, no team wants the rival’s colors boldly exhibited at its field, but does that mean it’s right to ask paying customers to change their clothes or move?

It should be noted that these seats come with the request that the occupants wear the Diamondbacks’ colors. They may, of course, cheer for whomever they choose, but for the sake of appearance, fans are given that simple request. Paul Bender, a professor of law at Arizona State University said, “It sounds kind of small-minded, but I would think they probably have the legal right to do that, especially if they let people know in advance that that’s the rule.” As the fans were notified of the rule, Bender is right. Even if Kendrick comes off as the bad guy, legally, he’s in the clear.

Yahoo! Sports writer Mark Townsend said, “You already have their money, so as long as they’re not wearing something offensive (division rival colors and logos don’t count) why not let them wear what they want?” But he is missing the point. The request had nothing to do with money—the fans were going to be compensated for a move. It’s about appearances.

Professional sports, in an arena, are a sort of theater. Fans pay as much for the show as they do for the game. No game in the world is worth $3,500. This isn’t about the cost of the tickets or the team’s gains from sales. It’s about image.

A team can live and die by its image. A city can live or die by its team’s image. The Diamondbacks have every right to maintain their brand however they choose. Diamondback fans at home don’t want to see another team’s colors on show in the best seats in the house. Dress codes are perfectly acceptable anywhere. Restaurants, clubs, businesses, schools—all have a certain image to project, and in the interest of their own brand, they ask that people abide by their rules. People who don’t follow suit are sometimes provided with alternate options, sometimes denied admission. There’s no reason Ken Kendrick can’t instate the same policies for his prominent box seats.

That said, it may not be the best business practice. Rivals’ fans will feel unwelcome, and if enough sports writers continue to berate Kendrick for his decision, he may become less than popular.

Still, though, all the world’s a stage, and when you enter stage left at Chase Field, you’d best be in costume.

With spring training already in full-swing, baseball season is right around the corner. It was baseball that brought one of the first professional African-American athletes, Jackie Robinson, to the forefront of the sports world. We now live in a society where African-American athletes are among the best in any sport, but it hasn’t always been easy for them. Robinson undoubtedly faced much ridicule and racism as he wowed people all over the country with his abilities. It is this month of February that we honor him and all those like him.

Black History Month, also known as African-American History Month, is an annual observance in the United States. It began in 1926, when historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced that the second week of February would be “Negro History Week.” Last week marked the birth dates of President Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, both of whom played very influential parts in African-American history.

The United States federal government acknowledged and expanded Black History Week to Black History Month due to a few leaders at Kent State University (Ohio) who wanted the celebration to encompass the entire month in February 1969. The first official Black History Month was celebrated at Kent State University in 1970.

While there are far too many African-American heroes to be honored in only one month, some may debate the need for an entire month dedicated to the history of one race. Being that African-Americans have held leading roles in the shaping of American culture especially in the realm of sport, what sports enthusiast could argue the need for this celebration?

As we have learned from Dana Brooks and Ronald Althouse in Racism in College Athletic, “Sport has been a place of courage and achievement for African American athletes, coaches, and athletic administrators who have been given the chance to play, coach, and administer college sports… Deeds of the past need not be visited upon African Americans in the future, but for full equality and opportunity to be achieved for African American college athletes, coaches, and administrators, a number of still unresolved problems must be addressed.”

According to Richard Lapchick, author of 100 Pioneers: African-American Athletes Who Broke Color Barriers in Sport, “Sports and race relations have traveled throughout most of history on a parallel plane…Most importantly, sport is unique in the boundaries it crosses with both its participants and its audience. Differences in gender, race, physical and mental abilities, age, religion, and cultures are irrelevant in the huddle, on the field, in the gym, or in the water. Sport smashes these barriers like nothing else can.”

There has always existed a certain degree of racism in sport. However, professor and dean at WVU College of Physical Activity and Sports Sciences, Dana Brooks; and professor of sociology and director of the Survey and Research Center at WVU, Ronald Althouse, have edited a book that explores and researches Racism in College Athletics specifically. http://fitinfotech.com/RacismCollegeAthletics3rd.html

Quite a few African-American athletes broke color barriers in their sport, and 100 of them are discussed in 100 Pioneers: African-Americans Who Broke Color Barriers in Sport. http://fitinfotech.com/100PioneersAfricanAmericansWhoBrokeColorBarriersSport.tpl

Any reader with zeal for sport and its boundaries within race and ethnicity will grow significantly from reading Sport, Race, and Ethnicity: Narratives of Difference and Diversity, edited by Daryl Adair. http://fitinfotech.com/SportRaceandEthnicity.html

Reading Baseball: Books, Biographies, and the Business of the Game provides a commentary on the history and evolution of baseball as a game and as a business. Reading Baseball also recognizes the importance of race and the Civil Rights Movement; and those larger than life characters, players, managers, owners and others who have been part of baseball’s grand parade.

Federal League Park, Chicago, 1914; Courtesy of chuckmanchicagonostalgia.wordpress.com

[Braham Dabscheck is an industrial relations scholar, sports writer and enthusiast, and author of Reading Baseball: Books, Biographies, and the Business of the Game, published April 2011, by FiT. He has written extensively on many aspects of sport, and he continues with that tradition today by offering a review of The Battle That Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy, as well as The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League. Dabscheck is a man proper from Down Under, and out of respect for his Australian English, no edits have been made to his vernacular.]

Daniel R. Levitt, The Battle That Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge And Its Legacy, Ivan R. Dee, Lanham (Maryland), 2012, hp. xvi + 314, pb, US $30.98.

Robert Peyton Wiggins, The Federal League Of Base Ball Clubs: The History Of An Outlaw Major League, 1914-1915, McFarland & Company, Jefferson (North Carolina) and London, 2011 (First Published 2009), pp. vi + 362, pb, US $40.00.

Economics focuses on the operation of markets and the competition that exists between those associated with the production and consumption of various goods and services. Focusing on the production side, economics predicts (tautologically as it were) that those entities which are the more efficient and resourceful will prevail over those that are less efficient and resourceful. Competition here has a hard edge, with the less efficient and able being destroyed and/or driven out of the market. The insights of economics are nowhere better illustrated than in the two volumes being reviewed here, which examine an unsuccessful attempt by a group of baseball entrepreneurs, under the umbrella of the Federal League, to take on Organized Baseball in 1914 and 1915. The incumbents were more resourceful in terms of cash, knowledge and strategic verve, in striking out the upstarts.

American baseball was the first professional sport to develop a formal league structure with a regular fixture between competing teams in the form of the National League in 1876. English football formed the Football League in 1888. It had earlier developed a knock out competition in the form of the FA Cup in 1871. Following its formation, the National League was challenged by a number of rival leagues: the American Association (1882-1883), the Union Association (1883-1884), the Players League (1890), a second round with the American Association (1891), and the American League (1900-1903). The National League either defeated or merged with the more financially secure clubs of the challengers. The American League, under the leadership of its president Ban Johnson, constituted the most serious challenge to the National League. In the end, the two leagues decided to merge and form the current two league structure, with the champions of both playing off in a World Series, which has continued to this very day. In turn, these two leagues entered into arrangements with minor leagues and formed a ‘structure’ that became known as Organized Baseball.

The period after the Civil War to World War I was one of extensive population growth, urbanization, and economic expansion in America. It resulted in an increase in a stream of rich men outside ‘established,’ well-heeled families, what might be called nouveau riche, who were looking for new opportunities to advance themselves onto a more public stage. Baseball was such a vehicle for these new men of substance. One of the strengths of Daniel Levitt’s The Battle That Forged Modern Baseball is how he situates the rise of this new breed of entrepreneurs as they searched for their place in the American sun.

In 1913, a group of entrepreneurs formed the Federal League, which operated in the Midwest as a minor league. It hardly attracted the attention of Organized Baseball. In the period from 1900 to 1918 there was constant fluidity in the number of minor leagues that started and finished a season. [1] After a reasonably successful season, Federal League owners decided that they would seek to take on Organized Baseball and operate as a third major league.

The Federal League faced two major problems in this quest. The first was to find and/or build ballparks that would be regarded as being of major league caliber. Stadium construction, at this juncture, was in the process of being transformed from wooden to iron and concrete structures. The Federal League experienced problems in finding locations convenient for potential spectators and were faced with high capital costs in building ballparks; returns on which would only accrue in the long term.

The second problem was attracting players of appropriate caliber to its ranks. The Federal League experienced major problems on this score. Only a small number of major league players, on the margins or at the end of their careers, found their way to the Federal League. Organized Baseball had deeper pockets and was more resourceful and calculated than the Federal League in battles over players. Organized Baseball combined the carrot and the stick in keeping its hold on players. It offered higher salaries and threatened blacklisting to players who were tempted to jump ship. It also relocated players to other clubs who were motivated to move to The Federal League because of ‘run ins’ or poor treatment from their managers or owners, often at higher rates of pay. In Ban Johnson, Organized Baseball had a master tactician who employed injunctions and court cases to dissuade players from joining the upstart league. Mounting such cases and pointing out to players the potentially negative consequences of an adverse decision served to persuade those who had signed with Federal League clubs to hold on for a while, before they moved on. This in turn served to take the wind out of the sails of the Federal League, which was seeking to develop some momentum in attracting quality players and establishing its major league credentials. Johnson was also assiduous in choosing which battles to fight and which to leave alone, and in maintaining discipline within and between the National and American Leagues. The Federal League lacked anyone with the experience and ‘smarts’ who could counter Johnson.

There were falls in the attendance, income and profits of clubs of Organized Baseball in 1914. Attendance picked up somewhat in 1915. Competition drove up player salaries. The Federal League struggled in 1914, with all clubs losing money in 1914. Things were worse in 1915, with a rain-interrupted season and lower attendances. Both sides, especially the Federal League, bled money.

After the 1915 season, both sides sued for peace. A deal was worked out whereby some of the Federal League owners could buy out or merge with teams from Organized Baseball, while others would be absorbed into higher-grade minor leagues. The deal did not include the Baltimore club. It challenged Organized Baseball and the agreement as being inconsistent with the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1922, the United States Supreme Court found that baseball did not constitute trade or commerce under the meaning of the Sherman Act, [2] and gave baseball, in distinction from other sports, an exemption from antitrust actions.

Levitt sees this league war as ‘forging modern baseball.’ It did not, in two senses. First, the battle did not change baseball in any meaningful sense. All it did was confirm the status quo that had been established when the National and American Leagues had merged in 1903. Second, the modern game, as it has been played since the mid-1970s (which is almost four decades ago and is more recent than 1915!) is significantly different from the way it was in the aftermath of the Federal League war. Threats from rival leagues in the 1950s and 1960s induced Organized Baseball to move teams westward to take advantage of new markets (and later southward) and to expend the number of teams that competed. What was once a 16-team competition has expanded into one of 30 teams. Second, the Major League Baseball Players Association has combined legal strategies and industrial action to substantially change the employment rules of baseball. Players, who once they signed with a club were unable to negotiate with other clubs, reduced to ‘mere chattels,’ found a way to force Organized Baseball to agree to a system of free agency (after six years of service) with concomitant increases in their economic freedom and income. [3]

These two books approach the Federal League war from different perspectives. Levitt’s The Battle That Forged Modern Baseball focuses on the off-field battles that occurred between the various protagonists. He not only examines the machinations that occurred between Organized Baseball and the Federal League but also the tensions that occurred within the respective leagues. Wiggins’s The Federal League Of Base Ball Clubs is more concerned with what happened on the field of play in the Federal League. He provides an essentially descriptive account of the highs and lows of teams and players and biographical information concerning players, managers, owners and other relevant personnel. His material is not as well organized and written as that of Levitt and is of less interest. Nonetheless, these two books together provide a comprehensive account of a major league war that occurred in American baseball almost a century ago.

© Braham Dabscheck
University of Melbourne

Courtesy of Flickr/Zane Hollingsworth

Those who study and follow the business side of sports are remembering the impact that Marvin Miller had on baseball and professional sports in general upon learning of his death earlier this week. Miller, the father of free agency in Major League Baseball, died on Nov. 27 at the age of 95.

As the president of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1966 to 1982, Miller had a considerable hand in shaping the current landscape for players. His fight against baseball’s antitrust exemption has forever changed not only baseball, but other professional sports as well.

Labor relations expert Braham Dabsheck was among those who mourned the passing of Miller. Dabscheck recently published Reading Baseball: Books, Biographies, and the Business of the Game. In his book, Dabsheck often references the importance Miller had in changing the rights of players, including the introduction of player free agency, a grievance procedure, and the sport’s first collective bargaining agreement.

“The Major League Baseball Players Association, under Miller’s leadership, transformed baseball industrial relations—virtually turned it on its head,” Dabsheck wrote in Reading Baseball (p. 13).

On the day of Miller’s death, Dabscheck, a senior fellow in the Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne, provided a personal account of his memory of Miller.

“I corresponded with him on a number of occasions in the 1970s when I was embarking on my research into the operation of professional team sports,” Dabsheck said. “He was always helpful and encouraged me in my research. He was interested to learn that I was able to demonstrate how employment rules in Australian football, similar to those in baseball, were inconsistent with the attainment of sporting equality.

“It is clear that he was the most important figure in the history of baseball from the 1960s on. He not only transformed the economic lot of baseball players, but also those of other team sports. He has also been an inspiration for a number of leaders of Australian player associations.”

That’s exactly what Keith Levasseur did when he ran the Baltimore Marathon in a spectacular time of 2:46:58 while wearing flip-flops. While his feat left his feet sore and raw from the rubbing of the flip-flop strap, I was actually rubbed the wrong way in reading about this story.

As someone who is preparing to run a marathon with my wife in a couple of weeks, and someone who gets blisters on my feet if I walk more than a few feet in a pair of flip-flops, I was captivated by the headline of this story. But from the first sentence, I was anticipating reading about a charity Levasseur was attempting to raise funds for. Or perhaps he was trying to raise awareness of those who aren’t fortunate enough to own a pair of shoes. There are many organizations that collect new and gently used running shoes to be dispersed to the needy throughout the world, the most prominent of which is Soles4Souls. The link between Levasseur’s run and the organizations’ missions seemed like a natural connection.

Yet when I came to the end of the story, there was no mention of Levasseur raising money or collecting used shoes. It appears as though his motivation was purely for personal glory in an attempt to be recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as having run the fastest marathon in flip-flops.

I’m not attempting to take away from the amazing accomplishment by Levasseur. Yet it strikes me as odd that I stumbled across this story from an email newsletter from http://SportsDoingGood.com. The stories featured on that website are typically about people raising funds or awareness for a charitable cause, or about one competitor casting winning aside in order to assist a fellow athlete.

There’s actually a growing field of sport development that highlights the potential individual and community benefits through sport. Fitness Information Technology’s new title Sport for Development, Peace, and Social Justice highlights much of that current research.

FiT is also publishing Freedom Run, a book about an ultra-distance runner who has parlayed his running into something greater than personal glory. Jamie Summerlin completed a 100-day, 3,452-mile run across America on July 4 in an attempt to raise money and awareness for military veterans. He ran approximately 35 miles every day for 100 consecutive days, enduring all sorts of weather and terrain while pushing himself mentally and physically.

Incidentally, I read a new story on Summerlin’s journey just hours after I read the story on Levasseur’s marathon oddity. That’s when it hit me that there was a drastic difference between these two amazing running accomplishments.

Summerlin’s mission wasn’t to earn an individual goal or record—it was to achieve something greater than personal glory. And as a result, tens of thousands of dollars have been donated to organizations focused on assisting veterans.

That is the definition of “sports doing good.”

[Braham Dabscheck is an industrial relations scholar, sports writer and enthusiast, and author of Reading Baseball: Books, Biographies, and the Business of the Game, published April 2011, by FiT. He has written extensively on many aspects of sport, and he continues with that tradition today by offering a review of Transpacific Field of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War. Dabscheck is a man proper from Down Under, and out of respect for his Australian English, no edits have been made to his vernacular.]

Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu, Transpacific Field of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War, The University Of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2012, pp. xiv + 314, $39.95 (cloth).

In December 1945, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, George Orwell penned a brief article in which he expressed far-reaching criticisms of the role performed by sport. He said that sport at the international level ‘is frankly mimic warfare…it is war minus the shooting’. [1] Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu’s Transpacific Field of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War provides a powerful antidote to Orwell’s negative views. Baseball, a game that was developed in America, found its way into Japan as part of the baggage brought by young Americans who journeyed to Japan following the Meiji Restoration, and young Japanese on return from visits to America. By the end of the 19^th century, that which was America’s ‘national pastime’ had also been adopted by Japan as its ‘national pastime.’ Baseball was something that the two nations had in common, and for those involved in this interconnectedness, it provided a means for mutual understanding, a force for good, the antithesis of Orwell’s views.

Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu examines the period from the Meiji Restoration to the end of the 1950s when both Major League Baseball and the Nippon Professional Baseball Association enjoyed the fruits of economic growth following World War II. The great strength of this volume is how Guthrie-Shimizu has researched both sides of the Pacific in drawing out the connections between these two baseball nations. Her bibliographic material runs to 50 pages, constituting over 16 percent of the volume.

Transpacific Field of Dreams constitutes an important contribution to globalization studies. Sport, in general, and baseball, in particular, provides another space in which people located in different places can interact with each other. Guthrie-Shimizu points out that ‘Historical narration confined to the chambers of high politics…cannot capture the full range and depth of diverse and often gendered social interconnectedness born of globalization’ (p. 4). She also says that she hopes ‘to make sports a useful platform of international history’ (p. 7). Further research would presumably reveal other ways in which Americans and Japanese (and other peoples across the globe) came to know, learn and appreciate each other in ways other than those portrayed in ‘narrations of high politics.’

Guthrie-Shimizu lays out a grid map of baseball in the Pacific Rim. It grew like topsy from below from America to Japan, Hawaii, and the Philippines. The latter two, in different ways, became part of the American empire. The Japanese, in turn, took baseball with them when they migrated to Hawaii and onto the American West Coast. The Japanese also brought baseball to those parts of Asia they colonized in the Twentieth Century: Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan. In their respective empires, both nations sought to use baseball as a means of social control and to extol different visions of the beneficial effects provided by baseball. And for those subject to domination, success in baseball provided a means for self identification and assertions of independence against their colonial masters.

While Guthrie-Shimizu is concerned with baseball in the Pacific Rim, her major focus is on how baseball developed and evolved in Japan, and was influenced and/or aided by American influences. She also examines how Japanese influences feed back into America and Japan’s Asian empire. Guthrie-Shimizu also has a keen and nuanced eye for developments within America, in both baseball and broader terms.

Baseball, having no other team sport competitor, quickly became Japan’s ‘national pastime.’ It became popular in schools, and then in universities/colleges and in enterprises, as Japan experienced industrial growth. A key ingredient of this growth was games with American teams. Initially, such contests were with expatriate Americans or navy teams that had sailed across the Pacific. In time there would be tours from American colleges, semi-pro, professional (white, African-American and mixed race) and female teams. In turn, Japanese teams would tour Hawaii and the West Coast, relying on support from Japanese sons and daughters who now lived in America. Teams also toured back and forth between Japan and various parts of its Asian empire.

Unlike America, which embraced professional teams after the Civil War, it took Japan until the 1930s to do so, with teams forming as branches of railway and newspaper companies, two of the emerging areas associated with Japanese industrialism and economic growth. Despite the differences in their respective economic cycles, one of the more interesting aspects of Transpacific Field of Dreams is parallels in the trajectories of baseball in both countries. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, both nations produced reports bemoaning the stench of commercialism which had seeped into school and college baseball. They both experimented with female leagues in the 1940s and 1950s.

The major difference between the two nations was how baseball was treated by its respective governments during World War II and the period after the war where Japan was under the governorship of General Douglas MacArthur (1945–1952). President Roosevelt allowed baseball to occur during the war, to help maintain morale. Those major leaguers who enlisted were mainly held back from theaters of war and spent much of their time playing with military teams. Only two major league players were killed during the war. With Japan, on the other hand, baseball was suspended and leading players did not receive the favored treatment of their American counterparts. Guthrie-Shimizu reports that 69 Japanese professional players were killed (p. 196). She provides information on American Japanese who were interned during the war and how baseball was one of the few means that they were able to use to help overcome deprivations and the poor treatment they experienced during internment.

Immediately after World War II, baseball in Japan quickly re-established itself. The American authorities shaped the development of the professional game by modeling it on key features of how it was organized at home: a two team league with an ‘independent’ commissioner to regulate the game. From then on, the game on both sides of the Pacific took off.

The thing about sport is that people like playing watching, talking and writing about it. It does throw up moments when terrible things happen and lead persons like George Orwell to despair. But it also something which persons in different places have in common. Sport has the ability to provide something which cuts through social, cultural and linguistic barriers. Baseball was something which persons in the Pacific Rim, and especially in America and Japan, shared. While those who sought to develop and propagate these connections may have been motivated by various and different reasons, baseball provided Americans and Japanese with a point of contact which helped those on both sides of the Pacific to learn about each other. In teasing out and explaining the different historical dimensions of this relationship, Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu has provided a masterful demonstration of the positive role that sport can play in international relations and the human condition. It would not be a surprise if Transpacific Field of Dreams found itself winning awards, and from both sides of the Pacific.

Braham Dabscheck

Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne

When the two teams that are a combined 38 games below .500 square off in the second-to-last game of the season, most fans won’t care who wins or loses or whether leading National League Cy Young candidate R.A. Dickey earns victory No. 21 (something a Met pitcher hasn’t accomplished since Dwight Gooden in 1985). Instead, all of the attention will be on 31-year-old who signed a one-day contract with the Marlins.

Adam Greenberg will be granted his “#OneAtBat” thanks to a clever grassroots social media campaign by an independent filmmaker.

It was in more than seven years ago that Greenberg received the biggest break of his promising baseball career when he was called up by the Chicago Cubs. On July 9, 2005, he was summoned by manager Dusty Baker to pinch hit. Greenberg’s dream of playing in the Major Leagues was coming true! But his dream quickly turned to a nightmare when the first pitch he saw from the Marlins pitcher—a 92 mile-per-hour fastball—drilled Greenberg in the side of the head.

The results of being hit by that pitch were devastating. Greenberg suffered a concussion, blurred vision, loss of balance, and was simply never able to fully recover. He attempted to, toiling in the minor leagues for a few years. He also recently played for the Israel national baseball team. But entering his 30s, Greenberg had probably come to terms that his big league career started and finished in the blink of an eye.

But Cubs fan and filmmaker Matt Liston was moved by Greenberg’s story. Greenberg is one of only four MLB players to have been hit by a pitch in their only career at bat, and Greenberg’s was the only at bat that lasted just one pitch. So Liston put together a slick campaign and moving video in an attempt to get Greenberg “#OneAtBat.”

The Miami Marlins, the team that ironically prematurely ended his career, were ironically the team willing to give Greenberg a chance to relive his dream. Commissioner Bud Selig also had to grant a waiver of a rule, allowing Miami to sign Greenberg to a one-day contract.

Then, on national television on NBC’s Today Show, Miami informed Greenberg of his opportunity to get back into the batter’s box in a Major League stadium.

So when Greenberg is called to pinch hit Tuesday night, he’ll be getting the rare chance at redemption. The outcome of his #OneAtBat is insignificant. The storyline here is that Greenberg and Liston wouldn’t let his MLB career be a one-pitch nightmare. And the Miami Marlins were gracious enough, or smart enough from a public relations standpoint, to help Greenberg get back into the batter’s box once again.

[Braham Dabscheck is an industrial relations scholar, sports writer and enthusiast, and author of Reading Baseball: Books, Biographies, and the Business of the Game, published April 2011, by FiT. He has written extensively on many aspects of sport, and he continues with that tradition today by offering a review of Beyond the Scoreboard: An Insider's Guide to the Business of Sport. Dabscheck is a man proper from Down Under, and out of respect for his Australian English, no edits have been made to his vernacular.]

Rick Horrow and Karla Swatek, Beyond The Scoreboard: An Insider’s Guide to the Business of Sport, Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois, 2011, xii + 228 pp.

Rick Horrow and Karla Swatek are sports entrepreneurs and/or middle persons who stitch up deals. Horrow is also a broadcaster/journalist who appears on sports and business programs. As is amply indicated by their title, they have brought together information on their ‘inside’ knowledge in Beyond The Scoreboard. In the introduction, they state that their volume “takes a comprehensive look at how the ever-growing professional sport industry really works” (p. x). Well, it doesn’t. What the authors do is provide a few brief words on countless deals that have been negotiated in the various bits and pieces associated with the production and presentation of sport. These range from mega sporting events such as the Super Bowl; broadcasting; digital media (Internet and fantasy leagues); sports facilities/stadia and the architects that build them; and the involvement of governments which often subsidize their building, franchises, players and player agents, sponsorship and ticketing.

Beyond The Scoreboard is nothing more than a collection of a mountain of facts. While readers will stumble upon some facts that they may have not come across before, description is not a substitute for analysis. Or to put it in language with which academics are more familiar, the book lacks a problematic, a narrative, a hypothesis to be developed and tested.

There are also a number of other problems associated with Beyond The Scoreboard. Various major sports and the owners of teams have managed to extract subsidies and financial support from local, city and state governments for the building of stadia and related facilities. Owners have used the threat of going elsewhere and denuding its ‘major league’ status in leveraging such subsidies. It might be added that it is generally acknowledged that much of America is experiencing an infrastructure crisis and that ‘tax revolts’ have reduced the ability of governments to respond to this crisis and fund more broadly based services, such as health, education, transport and even police to protect public safety. These latter issues are of no concern to Horrow and Swatek.

They see the development of stadia and sporting facilities, and their subsidization by governments, as beneficial to local communities. They say, “These broad conclusions have been reached by a sampling of economists, consultants, chambers of commerce and other business groups” (p. 98). This may be the conclusion of their last three groups: persons with whom they have a natural affinity. Sports economist Andrew Zimbalist has said that “every independent economic analysis on the impact of stadiums has found no predictable positive effect on output or employment.”[1] Horrow and Swatek have not conducted any cost-benefit analysis concerning the impact of the deals that they help broker; they can see (and hope to sell) the benefits and ignore or don’t worry about the costs. For an antidote to owners and their entrepreneurial coteries as god’s gift to America, as presented by Horrow and Swatek, readers may want to consult Dave Zirin’s Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining The Games We Love.[2]

Here is a minor error. On page 121, Horrow and Swatek state that Russian billionaire Roman Abromavich has spent more than $100 million dollars on the English Premier League (EPL) club Chelsea, but has yet to win a trophy. Beyond The Scoreboard was published in 2011. Chelsea won the EPL in 2004/5, 2005/6 and 2009/10 (It also won the EUFA Champions League in 2011/12).

Here are some major errors. Horrow and Swatek maintain that the negotiation of collective bargaining agreements places “onus … on agents and executives, just as much as on players and owners” (p. 160). Collective deals are negotiated by player associations on behalf of players and league executives. Agents represent players in individual negotiations with clubs.

They also state that reserve clauses (which enabled clubs to maintain a perpetual hold on players and/or denied players the ability to change clubs) were upheld by the courts as sport was not seen as falling under antitrust laws. They then say this situation was brought to an end following the passage of The Flood Act. They do not tell readers in what year this act was passed. Baseball received an antitrust exemption in Federal Baseball in 1922, which was upheld in Toolson in 1953 and Flood in 1972. The courts refused to apply it to other major league sports. Baseball achieved free agency via the grievance procedure in a 1975 case involving Andy Messermith and Dave McNally. The Curt Flood Act (not the Flood Act) was passed in 1998. It brought about an end to baseball’s employment rules exemption under antitrust legislation.[3]

There are two worse problems, however. Throughout Beyond The Scoreboard, Horrow and Swatek make statements that studies have shown something or other, but never actually provide sources or references to such studies. Beyond The Scoreboard lacks a bibliography, a prerequisite for any work which wishes to be taken seriously. Besides being a collection of facts, which makes for dull reading at the best of times, Beyond The Scoreboard has an additional problem which will reduce the motivation of readers to keep turning over pages. Respective chapters include a couple of lines, paragraphs or pages of text which are inserted willy nilly throughout the text. This reflects an inability of Horrow and Swatek to master the skills of integrating their material in a form which is attractive to readers. There is a skill to writing.

Beyond The Scoreboard constitutes low-level writing and research. It is nothing more than a collection of a mountain of facts, contains no problematic or hypothesis to be tested, contains errors, lacks any sense of academic rigor and has no sense of being kind to and engaging readers.

© Braham Dabscheck
Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne.

The Augusta National Golf Club has, for the first time in its 80-year history, opened its membership to women [1].

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and financier Darla Moore were extended invitations to become the first female members of the prestigious club. Both women accepted the offer. Augusta National has undergone scrutiny for its longstanding policy of exclusively male membership.

In 2002, Martha Burk, former Chair of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, appealed to then-chairman of the club Hootie Johnson to allow women into the club. His response was that female inclusion may be part of the club’s future, “but not at the point of a bayonet.” Opponents of his stance interpreted this statement as sexism, while proponents defended it as a refusal to bow to public pressure.

Not everyone is mollified by the new policy, however. Most readers on the New York Times website seemed to believe that the lateness of the gesture reflects badly on Augusta National. A few were even unhappy with the two women’s acceptance of the offer, such as Dee, who stated that she “would have had more respect for Ms. Moore and Dr. Rice if they had graciously declined to be associated with this club and said they preferred to golf elsewhere” [2]. This garnered a response from another commenter who agreed and further speculated, “Perhaps Rice and Moore were the only women who responded positively to the membership offer? Let’s hope that most women would realize a nod from Augusta was too little too late and, let’s face it, kind of lame” [3].

A few readers, however, viewed the invitations as a step forward that should be applauded rather than criticized. “Too many are too sullen here(!). What Augusta has done is a good thing. I see no reason, going forward, to beat the club up on or be vindictive about what used to be its policy. Augusta has arrived. Subsequently it will be impossible for it to go backwards. The only important issue to me now is what Condie’s handicap is” [4].

[1] ESPN.com news services (2012, August 20). Augusta adds first woman members.ESPN.com. Retrieved from http://espn.go.com/golf/story/_/id/8284599/augusta-national-admits-condoleezza-rice-darla-moore-first-two-female-members
[2] Dee. (2012, August 20). Re: Augusta National to Add First Two Female Members [comment]. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/sports/golf/augusta-national-golf-club-to-add-first-two-female-members.html?pagewanted=all
[3] JC. (2012, August 20). Re: Augusta National to Add First Two Female Members [comment]. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/sports/golf/augusta-national-golf-club-to-add-first-two-female-members.html?pagewanted=all
[4] Ben Graham’s Ghost. (2012, August 20). Re: Augusta National to Add First Two Female Members [comment]. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/sports/golf/augusta-national-golf-club-to-add-first-two-female-members.html?pagewanted=all