Strike won.

• Author: Wirzbicki, Alan
• Position: Political Booknotes

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HOLDS that America's national pastime is in danger of imminent collapse. Off the field, the sport's chronic labor problems threaten to alienate fans permanently. On the field, steroid-addled players care more about cashing their next paycheck than winning. Nothing is like it was in the old days, when baseball was truly special. Players don't hit home runs for hospitalized children, run out ground balls, or die of eponymous diseases. Hauntings of rural Midwestern cornfields are down precipitously. The magic is gone.

Charles Korr doesn't buy it. The End of Baseball As We Knew It, his history of the baseball players' union, is an alternative take on the national pastimes recent past, and required reading for anyone who's tempted to jump on the anti-union bandwagon in this latest round of labor trouble. Korr, who was granted access to the Major League Baseball Players Association's archives, chronicles the early years of the union that's largely responsible for today's professional sports landscape.

For those of us who grew up with millionaire superstars, the bad old days of baseball that form the back-drop of this book seem almost unimaginable. During the sport's so-called Golden Age of the 1950s and `60s, players worked under degrading conditions imposed by the owners. Clubs kept salaries low, and punished players who asked for more. Some of the era's most famous players suffered heavy-handed treatment. In 1957, future Hall-of-Famer Mickey Mantle asked the New York Yankees for a raise after winning the American League Triple Crown. The team's general manager responded by threatening to show Mantle's wife a private detectives dossier on the outfielder's carousing nightlife if he didn't accept the team's offer. Mantle quickly caved. The 19th-century labor rules still in place in the `50s left him with few options: The infamous "reserve clause" in players' contracts forbade Mantle from seeking a better deal from another club. Black players suffered further humiliation during spring training, when many teams moved to segregated facilities in Florida. Players could be bought or sold on an owner's whim. Job security was nonexistent; baseball is a remorselessly meritocratic business, and every player knew an injury or a hot rookie could end his career overnight.

The hero of Korr's book is Marvin Miller, a young Steel Workers Union economist hired by the players in 1966 to play hardball with the owners. Miller was the union's...