Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Major League Baseball in the 1980s is that it survived. Although the decade witnessed superb individual and team performances on the field, it was probably more notable for its labor disputes, strikes, threats of strikes, owner-collusion scandals, many substance abuse revelations, the Pete Rose betting affair, and, in general, the shortsightedness of those who ran the game. But despite these and other serious problems, baseball somehow remained vibrant and popular. In 1980, for instance, a record forty-three million people paid to see Major League Baseball games, income from baseball television contracts accounted for a record 30 percent of the game's $500 million revenue, and television ratings for the World Series had never been higher. Over the course of the decade all of these leading indicators would continue to improve, which suggests that baseball's place as the national pastime was not.....
This is a free excerpt of 150 words. This section contains 4,778 words. This
article contains 56,628 words (approx. 189 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our America 1980-1989: Sports Access Pass.
