sla book review: the conscience of the game

the conscience of the game

Reviewed by Mark Noe, Pennsylvania College of Technology

FEBRUARY 21, 2007 archive

The Conscience of the Game

The Conscience of the Game is part history, part group biography, and part the personal journey of a fan. Larry Moffi spent several years interviewing the present commissioner and his living predecessors, as well as attending the six congressional hearings on baseball regarding its antitrust exemption and its drug policies. He researched broadly in the history of the sport's governing bodies, from the National Commission that ruled its early years, to the Commissioner, ostensibly ruling (but, as Moffi makes clear, with varying degrees of authority) since the appointment of Judge Landis in 1920. The book is thus a good short course on the commissioner's office, but the very concept of a "short course" necessarily comes at a price. This one is incomplete and biased, though Moffi's bias alters as his study progresses. And, frankly, lots of fans will likely come to agree with many of his biases.

Moffi's argument, captured bluntly in the book's title, says the commissioner plays a key role in not just the guidance of the sport but in its integrity as well. That means he (the commissioners have, to date, all been male) is expected to exercise power over two constituencies, the owners and the players, and he does so in the interest of the fans. Considering that the commissioner is selected by the owners (and, in the case of the present commissioner, from among the owners), and that he remains in power at the pleasure of the owners, the balance Moffi believes implicit in the job is automatically tilted in favor of the owners over the players (and, perhaps more importantly, over the fans). As he retails the careers of the various men who have held the job, Moffi emphasizes the many instances in which commissioners have been "fired" by the owners (or by a sufficient majority of them) when they failed to discharge their duties in an "ownerly" enough way.

Throughout his discussion, Moffi also views baseball from another angle, as he goes to great pains (with no attempt at objectivity whatsoever) to distinguish between two contemporary elements the commissioners have been forced to serve, especially (in a formal context) over the past thirty or forty years. This involves the competing interests of major league baseball and Major League Baseball, Inc. Intimately tied to the fans he invariably feels he speaks for, Moffi connects the former term with the great game and America's national pastime and the latter term with corporate abuse of something otherwise beautiful. In this regard, Moffi is anything but subtle.

Put all these pieces together, and you get the "conscience" that must act beyond any individual or corporate interests. It is as if Moffi sees a right way or a political way, and he has been frustrated by the general tendency of commissioners to respond in the political. That, he feels, is unconscionable.

Despite his perspective, Moffi actually comes down rather easy on the current occupant of the office. Initially doubtful of how he'll view Bud Selig, several interviews with him convince Moffi that the man does find himself divided between what the owners want and what would be best for the game. He's similarly complimentary toward most of the previous commissioners, especially Chandler, Kuhn, and Vincent. Giamatti, in office less than six months, and noteworthy as commissioner primarily for the Rose decision, Moffi classes by himself in a Kennedy-esque quasi-beatified state. Moffi is generally neutral toward Ueberroth and -- as much as any writer could be, considering his trailblazing and game-saving task -- Landis. Eckert evokes mostly pity. Frick is the commissioner who, in Moffi's view, was the least successful, at times even the most harmful, leader of the sport.

All these impressions Moffi brings out through a series of chapters dealing with particular arguments waged by the groups that make up the professional sport. Those arguments include the aforementioned antitrust status and drug policies, along with the relationship between the major and the minor leagues, free agency, other labor-management issues, and gambling. He closes with a short chapter on his own impressions of how the commissioner might exert his power to act in the best interest of baseball as a conscience that supersedes owners, unions, or even fan prejudices. That chapter alone, agree with his ideas or not, makes the book worth the price of admission.

After all that, I'm going to quibble, just a little. Three things about the book were somewhat bothersome. (1) Tenses jump around when he tries to add a sense of immediacy in the sections on the congressional hearings. His use of the present tense there (and only there) is jarring in the context of the rest of the narrative. (2) Neither index nor bibliography is included. Both would be helpful, especially the index: for instance, I'd like to review the key things he says about Happy Chandler, but those references are scattered throughout the text, and it's a task to locate them all. (3) Several proofing errors must be worked out of a second edition.

Again, these are quibbles. The book offers a nice overview of the commissioner's office, its history, and its residents. It does a fine job situating the office and its occupants within the context of the sport. And it deserves to sell enough to make that second edition necessary.

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