Customer Reviews

Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itself

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Michael Shapiro writes a fascinating account of a little remembered baseball event namely the rise and fall of baseball's short lived Continental League. Covering the time period of Fall of 1958 through the famous Yankee's/Pirate's 1960 World Series, he unfolds the chain of events starting with Walter O'Malley's Dodgers leaving Brooklyn to head to LA and New York's search for another baseball team. William Shea was sent by the Mayor on this quest. Frustration would lead him to baseball executive Branch Rickey and there would begin baseball's third major league the Continentals. The fear of competition, congressional threats to baseball's anti-trust protection, and the player monopoly of the reserve clause, (reversed in 1974 with advent of free agency), would end the Major's expansion resistance and doom the Continental league.

The early chapters of the book deal with a lot of behind the scene business and political wrangling to get the major league owners to accept the Continental league. Shapiro does a great job unfolding the characters and players involved in this event. This was interesting and educational but had a tendency towards information overload with a lot of individuals coming in and out of the story. There was almost the need for a score card to keep track of everyone in this book. Overlapped within the Continental league's story is, in my opinion, the best part of the book and that was the 1960 World Series between the Yankees and the Pirates. This is where the book really starts to come alive in an almost mini series play-by-play. Casey Stengel's demise would coincide with baseball's dropping popularity and the real winners, beside expansion to cities across the country, would be the NFL. With television contracts and splitting money evenly for competitive balance, football would see its' popularity on the rise. This is one of those great sports reads and a definite must for anyone interested in the history of major league sports.

Last year was the fiftieth anniversary of the Dodgers and Giants arrival in California from New York, an act that made baseball a true coast to coast game. The effects of this move would be far reaching, but as shown in Michael Shapiro's book Bottom of the Ninth, it could have been even more transformational.

The protagonists of Bottom of the Ninth are Casey Stengel and Branch Rickey. As the main story begins, it is late 1958 and the Yankees are again in the World Series. More than its recently departed neighbors, the Yankees were the center of the baseball universe, and it was Stengel who had kept them there over the past decade. The Yankees were almost too dominant; it was such the natural order of things for them to win it all that even their World Series games weren't automatic sellouts. In 1958, however, the Yankees would be upset and doubts would begin to surface about Stengel.

Meanwhile, Branch Rickey was involved in a scheme to create a new baseball league, one to compete with and eventually join the other Major Leagues. His model was Ban Johnson's founding of the American League and Rickey, one of the savviest executives in baseball (who, among other things, was responsible for Jackie Robinson's debut with the Dodgers), had the knowledge and clout to make this new Continental League come into reality. Or so he thought.

By 1959, Stengel found his Yankees faltering and not even making it into the World Series, while Rickey was working to assemble his new league. The crux of this plan would involve having a new New York team at a site in Flushing Meadows. There were two big problems: getting enough teams and the resistance of the Majors. Rickey had plans for both these issues.

In 1960, Stengel would lead the Yankees back to the Series, only to see defeat in a most dramatic fashion, a game and Series ending home run. It would also spell the end of Stengel's Yankee career. Meanwhile, Rickey's Continental League would crumble, but leave a legacy of new expansion teams: the Mets (who Stengel would manage), the Colt 45s (later Astros), the Angels, and the Senators (the old Senators having become the Twins).

If there is a flaw with Bottom of the Ninth, it is with Shapiro's idea that the Continental League would have saved baseball, making it continue to be the most popular sport in the country. I don't think he makes a convincing case; I don't think it could have done much but briefly delay the arrival of football as the most popular support (ironically, soon, the NFL would be helped by the absorption of a rival league, the AFL).

Although Shapiro's premise may be lacking, this is still a good story that should be of interest to baseball fans, particularly those interested in the history of the game. Besides telling of the last years of Rickey and Stengel, it also brings to light an interesting footnote to the sport's history.

With "Bottom of the Ninth," author Michael Shapiro provides a comprehensive snapshop of baseball around the year 1960.
In this book Shapiro really weaves several stories, as well as a shift of power in baseball, and baseball's fall from being the nation's most popular sport. One of the primary stories involves the New York Yankees, who were coming off of two decades of dominance with an aging Casey Stengel as manager.
The other primary story is about the attempt of Branch Rickey, Bill Shea and others to establish a third league, the Continential League, to compete directly with the established American and National leagues and bring baseball to cities that were growing in population and wanted to be "big league" by having its very own team. Shapiro provides an in depth look at all of the back-office meetings that went on between the owners, who wanted to keep the status quo, and the leaders of the upstart Continental League, who wanted to launch the eight-team league. Throw into the mix the commissioner's office, the city of New York (which wanted to return National League baseball to the city), and background about congressional activity that protected the established order.
Similary, he illustrates how Casey Stengel was ending his run as manager of the New York Yankees, and gives a detailed summary of the famous 1960 World Series, which saw the Pittsburg Pirates defeat the Yankees in seven games. Casey would be fired following the 1960 World Series, deemed too old to manage the Yankees.
Another key compenent of the book is parallel Shapiro draws between the Continential League and the upstart American Football League. Branch Rickey was proposing some daring new business concepts for baseball -- revenue sharing (from television contracts), player drafts based on prior year team performance, and revenue enhanced by games broadcast on pay-per-view television -- concepts that the National Football League adopted in one way or another.
So how did the Continental League gambit turn out? New York got its wish and National League baseball returned to New York in 1962 with the birth of the Mets, three other cities received teams (Houston, Los Angeles, and the Washington Senators, which became the Minnesota Twins). Casey Stengel managed the Mets in 1962-63, and, although the Yankees were to appear in the World Series in 1961 to 1964, they would begin a decline that started to end when George Steinbrenner bought the team from CBS. Football surpassed baseball as America's No. 1 pastime, and today many would argue that baseball is now behind football, basketball and NASCAR as the nation's most popular sport.
I am a big baseball fan so I enjoyed Shapiro's book. So much of this book is not about what happens on the field, but off it. Shapiro has clearly done his homework, and he provides a window into the back-office wheeling and dealing that many fans never see. If you are a true fan of baseball, you will enjoy the detail. If you are a casual fan of the game, then there may be a little too much detail for you and you may be put off by all of the characters Shapiro weaves in and out of the story.

The forgotten history of a controversial period in Major League Baseball is unearthed by author Michael Shapiro and given a complete nine innings to deliver an all-star performance. The era is the 1950s; a time when a number of prominent businessmen wanted new seats at the exclusive table reserved for 16 members and the field of play was dominated by the New York Yankees.

In one dugout is Branch Rickey, who is president of the new Continental League, a creation of New York City-based attorney William Shea to bring professional baseball to seven new markets and a "replacement" club in New York City for the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. In the other dugout is Casey Stengel, who seemingly can do no wrong as the manager of the Bronx Bombers. But on the diamond is the power, prestige and caginess of the MLB owners and league officials.

Shea announced his plans for a new professional league in November 1958, with play to begin in 1961. The franchises were slated for New York City, Denver, Houston, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Toronto, Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth and Buffalo. Businessmen involved in the league included Jack Kent Cooke, Bob Howsam and Wheelock Whitney, Jr. Rickey - who had been out of baseball since relinquishing his general manager's post with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1955 - had a number of cutting-edge ideas to level the playing field to make a more competitive game, including revenue sharing.

Add to the mix a federal probe into MLB's antitrust exemption - the Supreme Court issued a ruling in 1922, which was upheld in 1953, that antitrust law did not apply to baseball, because games were local affairs , not interstate commerce - and it appeared that there was no getting out of the way of revolutionary change in the pro game. Antitrust law prohibits any action that unreasonably restrains competition and a number of businessmen were claiming foul by MLB for not even entertaining the prospect of expansion franchises.

How MLB eventually seized control of the tenuous situation and commandeered a plan to knock Rickey and the CL out of the batter's box is fascinating, since it was a defensive shift that included the essential elements of divide and conquer, which completely switched the momentum of the game...and ultimately dragged on until 1993.

But there was no question about who carried the momentum in the game, as the "Stengel era" was rewriting the record book. From 1949 to 1953, the Yankees won five consecutive World Series championships, along with the names of Mantle, Berra, Ford, Maris and Howard working their way into the iconic status reserved for DiMaggio, Gehrig, Gomez, Ruth and Meusel.

Then - as now - Stengel was mostly viewed as a master of the quip who had all the advantages of deep-pocketed ownership and the lure of the Big Apple for any five-tool prospect. But "The Old Professor" had found success with a platoon system that included using pinch hitters when he deemed necessary and having defensive replacements for the latter innings.

Entering the 1960 World Series versus - on paper - an overmatched Pittsburgh Pirates team (whose key players were part of Rickey's rebuilding plan earlier in the decade), Stengel had amassed 10 American League crowns and seven World Series titles in a dozen seasons. And it looked like an amazing eighth world title was there for the taking, but Maz let his bat do the talking in the seventh game for one of the biggest upsets ever. The chatter in the Yankee clubhouse concerned the over-managing by Stengel, who ultimately lost his job.

Shapiro deftly pens the rest of the story of two iconic figures....from the triumphs, travails and false starts in smoke-filled rooms to victory and - ultimately - defeat on the beautifully-manicured grass of the diamond that's overseen by the "Lords of the Realm."

The shadowy Continental League -- a putative "third major league" conjured up in the late 1950s by New York lawyer William Shea, legendary baseball executive/visionary Branch Rickey, and a motley collection of investors interested in cracking the 16-team National and American League structure -- is one of the great "might-have-beens" of baseball history. This well-argued but shakily organized book, however, didn't quite convince me that the failure of the CL to take shape was the turning point that led to baseball's loss of status as America's favorite sport. Author Shapiro tries to draw a parallel between the intended innovations of the CL -- revenue-sharing from TV, a possible adjustment of the reserve clause -- and those of the American Football League, which successfully challenged the NFL at almost exactly the same time. The CL, though, was always ephemeral in nature, with Shea's true goal being the return of a National League team to New York after the departures of the Giants and Dodgers. Once Shea got his wish (and, ultimately, his name on the Mets' new stadium), the CL vanished in a puff of smoke. The only real way that the CL would have shaken up the landscape is if it had decided to operate outside the structure of organized baseball, a tack that was considered but never pursued. The fact that a few CL operators joined Major League Baseball and immediately agreed to do business the "old-fashioned way" suggests that their simple desire to have a seat at the MLB "table" outweighed any desire to test a new model for how the game should function. Lamar Hunt and the other AFLers, by contrast, were perfectly willing to go their own way, at least until a series of tit-for-tat player signings (touched off by the urgings of new AFL commissioner Al Davis) convinced both the established NFL and the "newbie" AFL that peace and a merger were in both sides' best interest.

Shapiro would already have had the makings of a entire book had he chosen to focus on the backstage maneuvering that concluded with four new teams in the majors (in 1961 and 1962) and the CL consigned to oblivion. Instead, he tries to give us some game action to go along with all that "dry bread" by tracing Casey Stengel's final two seasons as manager of the Yankees. After winning the 1958 World Series, the Yanks slipped to third in '59, even spending time in the cellar at one point. Rebounding to win the 1960 AL pennant, the Yanks were upset by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series, and Stengel, now 70, was not-so-gently shoved out the door. This is all very interesting, but was a blow-by-blow account of the 1960 World Series truly necessary? Plenty of books on the "business of baseball" have been able to focus on the issue at hand without trying to force this more "readable" material into the narrative. Shapiro's coverage of the legal and business matter is fine, but the additional game stories and such made for a rather clumsy final product and, ultimately, an only partially successful read.

I found Michael Shapiro's "Bottom of the Ninth" a worthwhile read. I'm a pretty big baseball fan, but have found myself gravitating more toward football recently, not to mention college basketball. This book won't explain that, but it does dissect the transition in the late 50s-60s of baseball's popularity to football. Shapiro also manages to provide credit to the grounded Continental Baseball League for the American Football League's astonishing success. He also describes earlier attempts to expand baseball (both within and outside of Major League Baseball proper), provides biographical sketches of many of baseball's pioneers, talks about the genesis of the AFL, and provides play-by-play for a couple of World Series to include Pittsburgh's exciting Game 7 victory over the Yankees.

That's a lot of ground to cover and occasionally my attention waned as I tried to figure out where Shapiro was going. This is particularly true in the middle sections, but my patience was rewarded as Shapiro hits a home run with the closing chapters (and even does a reasonable job of tying things together). "Bottom of the Ninth" is organized chronologically beginning in October 1958 with the World Series between the Yankees and the Braves (Milwaukee) and concluding with the 1960 World Series between the Yankees and the Pirates. This form of storytelling works pretty well, but fails when Shapiro introduces new personalities and goes back in time to discuss their significance or prior events he believes have bearing on the story. It wasn't always clear to me the relevance of these digressions and, for the most part, I found they detracted from what he was attempting to discuss in the first place. This wasn't always the case--discussions of previous efforts to expand MLB were useful, for example--but more often than not, I found it made for disjointed storytelling.

In essence, "Bottom of the Ninth" is the story of the Continental Baseball League--a late 50s effort to create a third major league (in addition to the National and American Leagues). This league would bring big league baseball to seven cities and a second team to NYC (which recently lost two franchises (Dodgers and Giants) to California). The legend Branch Rickey was heavily involved (and is briefly bio'd in this book) as were several non-baseball men (to include William Shea). Some of their ideas to improve baseball, and stop its slide in popularity (attributed by Shapiro, primarily to the Yankees repeated successes, owner greed, and some innovations brought to bear by football) are detailed here--primarily revenue sharing amongst the owners (believed to improve parity). In addition, this is a book about the legendary Casey Stengel and his final years as Yankees' skipper. Shapiro provides insight into Stengel's managerial philosophy and delivers excellent play-by-play for three classic World Series matches. In addition, he brings to life some of the classic players of the age (especially Mantle) and does a great service to NY baseball in general as he details the genesis of the NY Mets and recaps the NY Yankees great success in the 50s and 60s (to include the many trades they made with the KC A's!).

This is a book worth reading--especially for New York baseball fans. It does suffer from some distracting sideline stories and a failure to keep chronological order or to one specific story at a time. Still...a recommend read for fans of baseball (and even football) history.

Michalel Shapiro's marvelously documented story of conflict between the likes of Branch Rickey and Casey Stengel in the late '50s-early '60s, has been downplayed by baseball historians; until now.

I suppose with all the furor going on in 1960 with the Presidential campaign, a wild and woolly World Series, and then one of the closest Presidential elections of all-time, this piece of folklore was largely overlooked by the media. That's understandable. Even back then, if it wasn't a compelling story, it received little attention. The election of JFK---that was a compelling story.

Baseball was as stale as Ford Frick's imagination. Here was the most powerful person in the game, stubbornly refusing to take Branch Rickey's progressive idea of expansion under consideration; instead, clinging to the notion that baseball needed no modification, essentially tossed the concept out the window; and with it, baseball's dominance as the National Pastime. Frick's apparent motto: "Change is dangerous."

In the meantime, as baseball's popularity languished, professional football took the ball and ran; by the end of the '60s, thanks to parity in the old NFL & AFL, a new generation of fans arose; many of them former diehard baseball fans.

The story of how all this unfolded is as compelling as any historical perspective on baseball I've ever read. The twists and turns from all angles kept me engrossed. It's truly a remarkable Odyssey for any student of the game to follow.

In 1958, major league baseball was struggling. Attendance had dipped from 21 million in 1948 to 17 million. The average attendance for the National League was 16,000 and 12,000 for the American League. Part of the reason for the decline was the lopsided distribution of power and the dominance of the New York Yankees. This alienated many fans. Additionally, many ballparks were outdated.

The Dodgers and Giants had abandoned New York for the West Coast, yet the National League refused to allow another National League team in New York. The Yankees had the Big Apple to themselves.

In the fall of 1958, New York lawyer Bill Shea announced intentions of forming a third league, the Continental League. Baseball icon Branch Rickey was the brains behind the proposed league. His vision was of an eight-team league that would be competitively balanced, pool 90 percent of its TV revenue and split it equally. The league would have one television contract, unlike major league baseball where each team had a television contract. The league would pool playing prospects and conduct a draft three times a year, based on a draw. Everyone would have a shot at the best players, giving each team a chance to be competitive and win.

Baseball commissioner Ford Frick was incensed at the thought of a third league. The key to the success of the Continental League would be the commitment of New York. Frick, however, wasn't going to be forced to put a team in New York because of the Continental League.

Frick, along with the New York Yankees, was content with the status quo. Manager Casey Stengel, owner Del Webb and general manager George Weiss represented the old guard. Author Michael Shapiro presents interesting profiles of the three men and their role in combating the Continental League.

Shapiro reveals the backroom politics of the battle and how major league baseball finally ended its resistance to expansion as a result. In October 1960, major league baseball announced it would add two American League teams in 1961--Los Angeles and Minnesota--and two National League teams in 1962--New York and Houston. In the end, seven of the eight proposed Continental League cities received major league franchises. Buffalo was the only city left out.

Although baseball didn't accept the concepts of Rickey's Continental League, football did. And, parity is one of the reasons why football surpassed baseball as the national pastime.

Shapiro does an excellent job of shedding light on the proposed Continental League and its impact. Very little has been written about the Continental League. Those interested in baseball history should be sure to read this book.

Bottom of the Ninth is a detailed history of baseball events on and off the field, baseball politics, and the characters involved in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The on-the-field and in-the-clubhouse tales are riveting. The scholarly recitation of events around the formation of the International League may be of interest to those New York baseball fans who were familiar with the key characters, and who were there to see events as they unfolded.

Today, when I asked a few friends if they knew who Casey Stengel was, I was greeted with blank stares. Every New Yorker of fifty years ago, baseball fan or not, would have known Casey Stengel, former New York player, Yankees and then Mets manager. He was a player or manager for all of the New York major league teams. Branch Rickey, another major character in Shapiro's history, key organizer of the Continental League, is also little remembered. He may be completely forgotten except perhaps for his role as general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers in hiring Jackie Robinson to play for the Dodgers in 1947.

Fifty years ago, major league baseball was the major occupation of New Yorkers. A person's key identification was by the team that he rooted for. Football and basketball were secondary. Not so today in New York or the rest of the nation. Baseball is on a downward spiral in the eye of the sports fan.

Shapiro's history has crystallized some of the thoughts that I have had about major league baseball. As a result of a bizarre supreme court ruling that baseball is not a business subject to the rules of other businesses, and as a result of political lobbying to keep Congress from changing that status, major league baseball has been free to engage in self-destroying acts. Over the last half century, we have seen teams shifted from city-to-city in a chase for fresh money, players strikes, absurd ticket prices, the continued dominance of big-city teams, and of course, the growing drug-use revelations. You can add your own observations to the list. How do you feel about the designated hitter rule, the cost of tickets, not using replay for out/safe calls?

Bottom of the Ninth is a great reminder to those of us who can remember when Stengel was the Yankees' manager. It will also serve as a great reference book for baseball fans as one more witness on how baseball got to where it is today. If you are not a baseball fan, then this history helps to explain why.

I am not a baseball historian; I guess I would consider myself a casual fan. I also am not quite old enough to remember the period in baseball history when a third league was envisioned. As a historical account of the back office dealings and negotiations necessary to form such a league this is the book for you. I was intrigued by the negotiations and work necessary to form a new league but lost interest as the book bogged down in the financial and legal details. This book is more of a history textbook about a forgotten and little known time in baseball. I would not recommend this book to the casual baseball fan but it is an excellent reference for those that are interested in the minute details about the failed attempt to create the Continental League.