Major League Rebels

This book tells the fascinating stories of the baseball rebels who were influenced by, and in turn influenced, America’s political and social protest movements throughout history—including battles over labor, anti-trust, corporate power, immigration, and America’s wars and military interventions worldwide.

Robert Elias is Dean's Scholar and Professor of Politics and Legal Studies at the University of San Francisco. His baseball books include The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Sold U.S. Foreign Policy and Promoted the American Way Abroad; Baseball and the American Dream: Race, Class, Gender and the National Pastime; The Deadly Tools of Ignorance; and Baseball Rebels. His baseball essays have appeared in Nine, Jacobin, Baseball Research Journal, Pacific Historical Review, Diplomatic History, International Journal of the History of Sport, and Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture. He's also been published in the Washington Post, The Progressive, The Humanist, Social Policy, Peace Review, Counterpunch, Transatlantica, and many other periodicals and books. He is a longtime Society of American Baseball Research and Baseball Reliquary member. He lives in Mill Valley, CA, near San Francisco. Peter Dreier is E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and founding chair of the Urban and Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. A former newspaper reporter, community organizer, and senior policy advisor to Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, he has authored, coauthored, or edited eight books, including The 100 Greatest Americans of the Twentieth Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame and Place Matters: Metro Politics for the Twenty-First Century. A member of SABR and the Baseball Reliquary, Dreier has published hundreds of articles, op-ed columns, and essays on baseball, politics and social movements for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, the Nation, American Prospect, Dissent, New Republic, Huffington Post, Salon, Talking Points Memo, the Progressive, and elsewhere. He frequently appears in the national media and has been interviewed by Bill Moyers, Travis Smiley, Rachel Maddow, and Bill O'Reilly, among others. He lives in Pasadena, CA.

Foreword, by Bill Lee Introduction Resisting Labor Exploitation 1. The Players Revolt Against Gilded Age Baseball 2. Challenging Baseball's Corporate Monopoly 3. Ending Indentured Servitude Contesting the American Empire 4. Resisting War, Fighting for Peace 5. The Latino Battle Against Baseball Colonialism and Racism 6. Protesting America's War on Terrorism Conclusion 7. Rebels for All Seasons 8. Baseball Justice: An Unfinished Agenda Index About the Authors