Coming Apart at the Seams: How Baseball Owners, Players, and Television Executives Have Led Our National Pastime to the Brink of Disaster

This chaotic book treats baseball's structural woes topically and chronologically, making the writers' arguments hard to follow. Sands, a Boston attorney, and syndicated columnist Gammons convincingly show that major-league baseball has been radically altered--and perhaps destroyed--by high salaries, TV contracts and labor struggles. But they ineffectively present some points, such as the team owners' roles in the downhill slide, and their generalizations do not hold up: for example, they paint the Busch family (who run their Cardinals with a keen eye for profits) and Gene Autry (who wants only for his Angels to win a World Series) with the same broad brush. Sands and Gammons make the customary observations about baseball finances--the TV networks paid too much for broadcast rights, the players' salaries suggest enormous inequities--and conclude by suggesting measures that might salvage the sport: by restructuring the major leagues, adding a new league, and redefining the role of the commissioner. The average baseball fan won't be much impressed. (Mar.)