
Smart Ball
Marketing the Myth and Managing the Reality of Major League Baseball
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Narrated by:
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Scotty Drake
About this listen
Smart Ball follows Major League Baseball's history as a sport, a domestic monopoly, a neocolonial power, and an international business. MLB's challenge has been to market its popular mythology as the national pastime with pastoral, populist roots while addressing the management challenges of competing with other sports and diversions in a burgeoning global economy.
Baseball researcher Robert F. Lewis II argues that MLB for years abused its legal insulation and monopoly status through arrogant treatment of its fans and players and static management of its business. As its privileged position eroded in the face of increased competition from other sports and union resistance, it awakened to its perilous predicament and began aggressively courting athletes and fans at home and abroad.
Using a detailed marketing analysis and applying the principles of a "smart power" model, the author assesses MLB's progression as a global business brand that continues to appeal to a consumer's sense of an idyllic past in the midst of a fast-paced, and often violent, present.
©2010 University Press of Mississippi (P)2012 Redwood AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Packed with great baseball business facts, but dry
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Smart Book with an Unfortunate Narrator
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Listener received this title free
The author outlines the path baseball took to become the national pastime sport, creating its own mythology behind the birth of the game in the U.S. Lewis brilliantly demonstrates how baseball developed its own origins, continued the folklore over the years, and contrived its own history. The book also points out that by the 1960's, football (both professional and college) had passed baseball as the nation's favorite sport.
Lewis makes a compelling comparison between baseball to secular religion. The author points out that baseball players compare to church missionaries, both promoting the product to the masses. Case in point, when baseball organized a world tour during the dead ball era, it was used for marketing purposes. Back in the states, religious organizations maintained no baseball on Sundays until the 1930's, as it was perceived to be the Lord's day.
The author shows the comradery built between the country and baseball through the war years. Often times, players would pause their baseball aspirations to serve in the military. Lewis notes how teams sports grew in popularity after the second world war. "Smart Ball" also shows how Major League Baseball has utilized both soft power and hard power to achieve its many goals through the decades.
Myth Buster
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