Smart Ball: Marketing the Myth and Managing the Reality of Major League Baseball

(University Press of Mississippi) The author assesses Major League Baseball’s progression as a global business brand that attempts to market its popular mythology as the national pastime while addressing the management challenges of competing with other sports and diversions. Tracing the history of MLB, he argues that increased competition from other sports and union resistance have eroded baseball’s legal insulation and monopoly status, forcing the sport to actively court athletes at home and abroad. Lewis is a part-time teacher and retired executive of Prudential Life.