Books in Brief: Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner

Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner, by Bowie Kuhn (Times Books, 453 pp., $19.95)

Bowie Kuhn has seldom been mentioned in the same breath as baseball’s first commissioner, the tyrannical Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, but it is time for him to be recognized as the Judge’s equal, and perhaps as his superior. For Hardball, a book in the tradition of baseball’s liveliest apologias (a la Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, and Ted Williams), shows how Kuhn guided the game successfully through the toughest times in its history. When Kuhn took over as commissioner pro tempore in 1969, baseball was facing serious problems: stagnant attendance, the dominance of pitching on the field, poor television contracts, and increasing competition from pro football and basketball. A series of new, even stiffer, challenges confronted Kuhn throughout his two seven-year terms: the Denny McLain gambling scandal; Curt Flood’s legal challenge of the reserve clause; the Hank Aaron controversy (Kuhn forbade the Braves to hold Aaron out of a series in Cincinnati to ensure he’d break Babe Ruth’s home-run record in Atlanta); ill-advised franchise shifts; the growth of corporate ownership; drugs; and, particularly, an increasingly militant players’ union and the dawning of the free-agency era, “an era of fiscal irresponsibility by ownership that has not abated to this day.” His readiness to restrain wayward owners and to discipline them with fines and even suspensions whenever their pursuit of selfish interests conflicted with the “good of the game” proved the unfairness of the charge that Kuhn was a “pawn of ownership.” The considerable wit and humor, much of it self-deprecating, of Hardball similarly undercuts the image of Kuhn as a pompous stuffed shirt. The introduction of post-season night games, the negotiation of a six-year, $1.1-billion TV deal, and making Negro League stars eligible for the Hall of Fame were among his accomplishments, but nothing was more significant than the enormous popularity baseball achieved during his tenure. Those who believe that Bowie Kuhn was merely coincidental to that boom will have to reassess their thinking after reading Hardball.

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Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner, by Bowie Kuhn (Times Books, 453 pp., $19.95)

Bowie Kuhn has seldom been mentioned in the same breath as baseball’s first commissioner, the tyrannical Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, but it is time for him to be recognized as the Judge’s equal, and perhaps as his superior. For Hardball, a book in the tradition of baseball’s liveliest apologias (a la Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, and Ted Williams), shows how Kuhn guided the game successfully through the toughest times in its history. When Kuhn took over as commissioner pro tempore in 1969, baseball was facing serious problems: stagnant attendance, the dominance of pitching on the field, poor television contracts, and increasing competition from pro football and basketball. A series of new, even stiffer, challenges confronted Kuhn throughout his two seven-year terms: the Denny McLain gambling scandal; Curt Flood’s legal challenge of the reserve clause; the Hank Aaron controversy (Kuhn forbade the Braves to hold Aaron out of a series in Cincinnati to ensure he’d break Babe Ruth’s home-run record in Atlanta); ill-advised franchise shifts; the growth of corporate ownership; drugs; and, particularly, an increasingly militant players’ union and the dawning of the free-agency era, “an era of fiscal irresponsibility by ownership that has not abated to this day.” His readiness to restrain wayward owners and to discipline them with fines and even suspensions whenever their pursuit of selfish interests conflicted with the “good of the game” proved the unfairness of the charge that Kuhn was a “pawn of ownership.” The considerable wit and humor, much of it self-deprecating, of Hardball similarly undercuts the image of Kuhn as a pompous stuffed shirt. The introduction of post-season night games, the negotiation of a six-year, $1.1-billion TV deal, and making Negro League stars eligible for the Hall of Fame were among his accomplishments, but nothing was more significant than the enormous popularity baseball achieved during his tenure. Those who believe that Bowie Kuhn was merely coincidental to that boom will have to reassess their thinking after reading Hardball.