Mint Condition by Dave Jamieson

Author:Dave Jamieson [Jamieson, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2000-01-15T08:00:00+00:00

The problem wasn’t just a feebly funded and impotent trade organization. It was also the attitude of the people that organization ostensibly represented. The average player despised the very concept of a strong union. Many hailed from small towns that had been engulfed in labor strife at one point or another, and they feared that racketeering and strikes would poison a beloved pastime if the likes of Miller got involved. Before he even had a chance to sit down with players, Miller was reading antiunion blather in the papers directed at him from the very men he’d soon be representing. According to Miller’s autobiography, California Angels first baseman Joe Adcock expressed the prevailing view succinctly to newspapers during 1966 spring training: “Pro sports has no place for unions.”

Miller’s first order of business, then, was to instill a union consciousness in players, to make them recognize that as a group they could push back at team ownership enough to improve both their salaries and their rights as laborers. But before the revolution could begin, Miller needed to fund his organization. To do so, he looked to baseball cards.

The fight Miller was about to pick with Topps marked the beginning of a dramatic restructuring in the business of baseball. Within a few years owners would no longer have a clear upper hand in their dealings with players, and Miller would have refashioned his anemic little union into one of the most formidable in the country.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.