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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Unintentionally revealing account of Kuhn's tenure, May 16, 2000
This review is from: Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner (Paperback)
The reader should come away from an autobiography with an understanding of the author's personality and his place in the world. By that standard, Bowie Kuhn's autobiography is a success: on nearly every page, he reveals that even in retrospect he doesn't understand what happened while he was Commissioner of Baseball. Kuhn, who served as Commissioner from 1969 until 1984, comes across as a character out of P.G. Wodehouse -- a doddering nobleman who obliviously mouths platitudes while his world collapses around him. Unlike predecessors Spike Eckert and Ford Frick, Kuhn actually believed the myth of the Commissioner as Majestic Neutral, lording above owners and players alike to proclaim The Best Interest of Baseball. The players were never fooled: they knew Kuhn was hired and paid by the owners, and took their cues from master negotiator Marvin Miller. Within a few years they had won the right to take their grievances to a truly impartial arbitrator, using this leverage to win free agency. Kuhn never knew what hit him. The owners weren't fooled, either. They knew the difference between a pretentious title and actual power -- and they fumed when Kuhn's attempt to play a role in labor negotiations undercut their own bargaining position. Throughout the second half of his tenure, Kuhn spent more time battling to keep his job than actually doing it. When Kuhn took office, the owners ran MLB as they pleased. When he left, the owners couldn't sneeze without clearing it with the Players' Association. Read this book and you'll understand how this happened.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Bowie Kuhn in defense of Bowie Kuhn, September 3, 2005
This review is from: Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner (Paperback)
Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner is, at base, a sad book about a guy who spent 15 years of his life attempting to accomplish something that had a zero percent chance of success from the start. Kuhn, you see, wanted to be Kennesaw Mountain Landis, which is fine except for the fact that nobody in baseball either wanted another Landis or was particularly crazy about the original. Bowie appears to have believed that the growing acrimony between the owners and the players in the 1970s would ultimately result in his emergence as a "court of last resort" - but it didn't happen and as a result Kuhn sat on the sidelines of most of the great debates of the time.
In essence, he was a man waiting for a train that never arrived.
The argument that Bowie didn't understand what was going on around him has a lot of validity, but I think that (as the book clearly shows) Kuhn's problem was more along the lines of seeing things the way he wanted to see than simply being oblivious to the situation. He clearly doesn't "get" people like Marvin Miller, Charlie Finley, and George Steinbrenner, and moreover he feels dismayed that they are so hell-bent to change the game that he knows and loves. Of course, Bowie Kuhn's vision of baseball has something of the smell of an 1850s plantation to it, but hey - the man is clearly as much fan as executive, so can we really blame him for his illusions?
I gave the book two stars because it is a heavy, somewhat depressing read steeped with high levels of self-delusion, but students of the era will find it interesting to review the Messersmith-McNally decision and others through the eyes of someone who was on the scene - even if his sight was a bit foggy. The book's biggest revelation is that Bowie Kuhn comes across as a very decent man: a little straightlaced, perhaps, but a solid kind of fellow who was basically for the good guys and against the black hats.
In the final analysis, a book that perhaps shouldn't have been written by a guy who probably shouldn't have been Commissioner of Baseball.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Kuhn's self-serving account of his years as MLB Commissioner, October 29, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner (Paperback)
Plainly, Mr. Kuhn would prefer that his official version of events in baseball from the late 60s into the 80s prevail, despite the popular notion that he was overdrawn at the clue bank during much of that period. His account of labor negotations during his tenure conflicts in many respects with the published accounts of Marvin Miller (the players union representative) and (more objectively) with the account set forth in LORDS OF THE REALM (written by a WSJ reporter). Mr. Kuhn's attempt to repaint his missteps as leadership is certainly understandable, and the book is interesting as a historical document, but bring your grain of salt -- or maybe the whole shaker.
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