The Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball

It’s a good book and gives the history of baseball and the ownership and leadership in the sport. Unfortunately there were delays in shipping so I didn’t get it until over the weekend. Hopefully the updates will be more timely next time. The author is quite an accomplished person and did a lot of research in writing this book.

The book was very informative. It was a bit dry at times but, overall a very good read.

This book give good insight on the relationship between the Owners and Players since the 60's

This is my favorite baseball book. I'm a huge fan of the game, and like the nostalgia aspect of it (the first three innings of Ken Burns baseball are perfect to me), but this book takes you behind the public face of the game. There are plenty of books that focus on individual players, seasons, and teams, but few that focus on baseball from the business and particularly labor aspect of the game. After reading this, you can see why the MLBPA and MLB enjoy relative peace after their epic battles while the other leagues still ride roughshod over their respective unions. It has all the characters that make baseball history so entertaining; Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Bowie Kuhn, Charlie Finley, Marvin Miller... and related interesting stories, Catfish Hunter getting free agency because Charley Finley was sloppy with payments is the most amusing to me. The book is primarily written from a pro-player/labor view point, so if that doesn't appeal to you, this might not be the best read other than that, it holds up.

Helyar's book dives into the long, tumultuous history of the business of baseball. He shows the evolution of the game from a sport completely dominated by the owners to a struggle between the owners and the labor union. Most chapters show an evolution from this standpoint, with a few asides about popular baseball issues during their time (i.e. the suspension of George Steinbrenner and Pete Rose). Lots of interesting tidbits can be found in this book, such as why Dodgers Stadium serves only Miller beer products and how Catfish Hunter got his nickname. One downside is the book is slightly lengthy (over 600 pages), but a large majority of it is relevant, interesting, and easy to read. I strongly recommend this for any fan of baseball.

I enjoyed this book very much. It provided an insightful history into the baseball labor dynamic from the 1960's to 1994. There were several typos in the Kindle version, which were a bit off-putting. Clearly a pro-labor slant, yet well-researched.

This is one of the best baseball books I've ever read, and the definitive narrative on owner-player relations. Gets to the heart of the matter regarding player disputes and the history of labor relations in baseball going all the way back to the early years of the 1870's.. Though the writing can be a bit dry at times, if you want to be informed as to what really happened in 1972, 1981, 1994, 1995 and all the years before and after, you must read this book!

The book was very interesting and well written, but I was bothered by several name misspellings. A gentleman named Roy was referred to as Ray and Dodger GM Al Campanis’ name was continually spelled “Campanie”. This kind is sloppiness lowers my rating from 5 stars to 3.

Great stories about major league players up until the 94 strike however it should have kept going through the strike and finished with the steroid era, otherwise decent read