Hard Ball [Hardcover]

James Quirk (Author), Rodney D. Fort (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691058172 | ISBN-13: 978-0691058177 | Publication Date: March 1, 1999

What can possibly account for the strange state of affairs in professional sports today? There are billionaire owners and millionaire players, but both groups are constantly squabbling over money. Many pro teams appear to be virtual "cash machines," generating astronomical annual revenues, but their owners seem willing to uproot them and move to any city willing to promise increased profits. At the same time, mayors continue to cook up "sweetheart deals" that lavish benefits on wealthy teams while imposing crushing financial hardships on cities that are already strapped with debt. To fans today, professional sports teams often look more like professional extortionists.

In Hard Ball, James Quirk and Rodney Fort take on a daunting challenge: explaining exactly how things have gotten to this point and proposing a way out. Both authors are professional economists who specialize in the economics of sports. Their previous book, Pay Dirt: The Business of Professional Team Sports, is widely acknowledged as the Bible of sports economics. Here, however, they are writing for sports fans who are trying to make sense out of the perplexing world of pro team sports. It is not money, in itself, that is the cause of today's problems, they assert. In fact, the real problem stems from one simple fact: pro sports are monopolies that are fully sanctioned by the U.S. government. Eliminate the monopolies, say Quirk and Fort, and all problems can be solved. If the monopolies are allowed to persist, so will today's woes.

The authors discuss all four major pro team sports: baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Hard Ball is filled with anecdotes, case studies, and factual information that are brought together here for the first time. Quirk and Fort devote chapters to the main protagonists in the pro sports saga--media, unions, players, owners, politicians, and leagues--before they offer their own prescription for correcting the ills that afflict sports today. The result is an engaging and persuasive book that is sure to be widely read, cited, and debated. It is essential reading for every fan.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As important as it is depressing, Hard Ball takes a serious look at how professional sports in America has fans and communities in a vise grip. Salaries are out of control. Labor disputes and contract renegotiations are reported next to the standings. Corporate boxes and sponsorships determine the fate of stadiums. Owners hold cities hostage. In an arena in which teams are obsessed with profits over championships, bottom lines over win-loss records, and market bases over fan loyalties, the games themselves are really secondary, at best.

A pair of economists, Quirk and Fort explore the ways the major sports--baseball, football, basketball, and hockey--have changed the way they do business in the last half of the 20th century as the balance of financial power has shifted overwhelmingly to the individual league monopolies: "... the market power of leagues enables them to capture the great bulk of the monopoly profits ... from gate receipts, media income, sweetheart stadium deals and rental arrangements, and other sources. These monopoly profits in turn become the prize package over which owners and players, who are backed by their player unions, fight." In any other industry, the authors contend, these monopolies would have long ago been banged around by Congress, and, indeed, they argue quite forcefully for their breakups. Neither their diagnosis of disease nor their prescription for cure are new. Still, what makes Hard Ball sadly necessary is how clearly and completely Quirk and Fort make their case that, for the good of sports, something's gotta give. --Jeff Silverman

Review

In their book, Hard Ball, James Quirk and Rodney Fort take the sports industry to task with a well-conceived and clearly rendered brief on the economics behind professional sports. The authors use a methodical but vigorous approach to examine the groups--the media, unions, players, owners, leagues and local politicians--that make up the pro-sports complex. . . . In the end, the authors blame all of pro sports' ills--from player salaries to TV contracts to sweetheart stadium deals--on monopoly. And their solution is a radical one: Like a pair of trust-busting Teddy Roosevelts, the authors would have the Department of Justice ride into the fray and carve up each of the leagues into three or four separate entities.
(Jonathan V. Last Washington Times )

A significant contribution . . . The authors also provide a fascinating glimpse at the history of sports revenue issues . . . a readable, even chatty, dissection of our games from a valuable point of view.
(Paul Chapin Elysian Fields Quarterly )

An interesting look into the world of professional athletics. . . . [A] fresh perspective on an industry increasingly scrutinized and under fire.
(Lane Hartill The Christian Science Monitor )

A gem of clear analysis and argument. . . . [E]ssential reading for everyone.
(Katherine A. Powers The Boston Globe )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 246 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691058172
• ISBN-13: 978-0691058177
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,206 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hardball, the abuse of Power in Pro Team Sports, May 31, 2000

By 

David Reese (Huntingdon Valley, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hard Ball (Hardcover)

Hardball is the most enlightening sports book I have read in a long time. Die-hard team-sports fans are traditionally opinionated, knowledgeable, and frustrated that "it ain't what it used to be". Quirk and Forth, both economists, re-describe the world of pro sports in a manner that can affect even the most opinionated. Their rhetoric and logic are compelling and appealing. They even have a solution to bring a Why-didn't-I think-of-that? smile to your face. And, if you care, the book is packed with statistics.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent discussion of the monopoly power in pro sports, September 1, 1999

By 

James Armstrong - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hard Ball (Hardcover)

Finally! I've been waiting for an entire book devoted to the monopoly power in pro sports ever since reading Stephen Ross's chapter in "The Business of Professional Sports" advocating the breakup of these monopolies. Quirk and Fort's Hard Ball fits the bill nicely and advances many of the same views as Ross, namely that multiple, competitive leagues would result in lower ticket prices, fewer public subsidies for stadiums, and the penetration of professional sports into all markets that demand and can sustain it.

The authors of Hard Ball are certainly well-qualified to discuss this subject, having earlier published Pay Dirt, the so-called bible of sports economics. Hard Ball is much easier to read than Pay Dirt and seems to be aimed more at the non-academically-inclined sports fan, being much lighter on economic theory and a little more narrowly focused. Although Hard Ball doesn't have the detailed historical discussion that Pay Dirt has, it still gives a good overview of the problems caused by the monopolies and how they came to be. It discusses in detail how the owners, players, leagues, TV networks, and politicians are affected by the monopoly power and why these groups have little, if any, financial motivation to fight it.

Perhaps Hard Ball has a couple of minor shortcomings. First, there is very little discussion of whether pro sports leagues are a "natural" monopoly, a view that is held by experts who oppose the position advanced by Hard Ball. The second is that, while the authors demonstrate clearly and throughout the book the potential economic benefits of their theory as public policy, their final chapter offers a rather feeble attempt at persuading the reader of the benefits to the sports fan in the form of increased competition and availability of big-time pro sports. But overall, Quirk and Fort embark on a very interesting and convincing discussion of the topic.

Continuing their trend from Pay Dirt, the data tables at end of Hard Ball serve as a comprehensive and invaluable reference. The Hard Ball data concentrates on financial numbers during the 1990s in all four major pro sports leagues. While some of the data is pretty basic stuff (media income, salary averages, etc.) other charts are quite amazing (for example, one showing that the correlation in the 1990s between payroll and winning percentage in MLB is so small that it is statistically insignificant). As with Pay Dirt, even if the text doesn't inspire you, the data supplement alone is worth the purchase price of the book.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The market is an alternative solution to problems in sports, October 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hard Ball (Hardcover)

In HARD BALL, economists James Quirk and Rodney Fort document and persuasively blame the monopoly power and authoritarianism of professional sports leagues for exorbitant ticket prices, high and escalating player salaries, growing revenue disparities between small- and large-market teams, and the leverage owners use to blackmail cities to finance new facilities with taxpayer subsidies. To eliminate these problems, Quirk and Fort advise that "the Justice Department should file suit and break up the existing monopoly leagues into several independent leagues with the antitrust laws applied to the industry created" (see page 177). To be sure, their proposed solution to dismantle leagues will stimulate discussion and research to improve the economic conduct and social performance of the industry. But in RELOCATING TEAMS AND EXPANDING LEAGUES IN PROFESSIONAL SPORTS: HOW THE MAJOR LEAGUES RESPOND TO MARKET CONDITIONS (Quorum Books, 1999), John Guthrie and I argue that between 1950 and 1995 leagues and franchise owners made rational decisions to approve team movements and expand league membership. We concluded that market participants-owners, players, sports fans, and communities-together are best equipped to determine the growth and development of professional sports in America. An alternative proposal to mainstream economists, we oppose any bureaucratic role for government in allocating the number and location of teams in professional sports. In our view, innovation and reform of the sports industry should be initiated and implemented by the market and not by regulation.