Volume 38, Number 17 · October 24, 1991
The H and Q of Baseball
By Stephen Jay Gould
A Whole Different Ball Game: The Sport and Business of Baseball
by Marvin Miller
Birch Lane Press, 430 pp., $21.95
Ted Williams: A Portrait in Words and Pictures
edited by Dick Johnson, text by Glenn Stout
Walker and Company, 225 pp., $24.95
My Favorite Summer 1956
by Mickey Mantle, by Phil Pepe
Doubleday, 246 pp., $18.95
The Home Run Heard 'Round the World: The Dramatic Story of the 1951 Giants–Dodgers Pennant Race
by Ray Robinson
HarperCollins, 244 pp., $19.95
If you wish to divide Americans into two unambiguous groups, what would you choose as the best criterion? Males and females, east and west of the Mississippi? May I suggest, instead, the following question: 'What is Justice Blackmun's worst decision?' Anti-abortionists, and conservatives in general, will reply without a moment's hesitation: Roe v. Wade. Liberals might need to think for a moment, but if they are baseball fans as well, they will surely answer: Flood v. Kuhn. For, in 1972, the same Harry Blackmun who gave us Roe v. Wade also wrote the 5–3 decision (with the usual trio of Douglas, Marshall, and Brennan in opposition) denying outfielder Curt Flood the right to negotiate freely with other teams following the expiration of his contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, and upholding the admittedly illogical exemption of major league baseball from all antitrust legislation (on the preposterous argument that this game alone—for none other has such a waiver—is a sport and not a business).
Review, 6106 words
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