Home Team: Professional Sports and the American Metropolis

by Michael N. Danielson

Overview

Most books that study professional sports concentrate on teams and leagues. In contrast, Home Team studies the connections between professional team sports in North America and the places where teams play. It examines the relationships between the four major professional team sports—baseball, basketball, football, and hockey—and the cities that attach their names, their hearts, and their increasing amount of tax dollars to big league teams. From the names on their uniforms to the loyalties of their fans, teams are tied to the places in which they play. Nonetheless, teams, like other urban businesses, are affected by changes in their environments—like the flight of their customers to suburbs and changes in local political climates. In Home Team, professional sports are scrutinized in the larger context of the metropolitan areas that surround and support them.


Michael Danielson is particularly interested in the political aspects of the connections between professional sports teams and cities. He points out that local and state governments are now major players in the competition for franchises, providing increasingly lavish publicly funded facilities for what are, in fact, private business ventures. As a result, professional sports enterprises, which have insisted that private leagues rather than public laws be the proper means of regulating games, have become powerful political players, seeking additional benefits from government, often playing off one city against another. The wide variety of governmental responses reflects the enormous diversity of urban and state politics in the United States and in the Canadian cities and provinces that host professional teams.



Home Team collects a vast amount of data, much of it difficult to find elsewhere, including information on the relocation of franchises, expansion teams, new leagues, stadium development, and the political influence of the rich cast of characters involved in the ongoing contests over where teams will play and who will pay. Everyone who is interested in the present condition and future prospects of professional sports will be captivated by this informative and provocative new book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691070643
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	02/04/2001
Edition description:	With a New preface by the author
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michael N. Danielson is B. C. Forbes Professor of Public Affairs and Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, where he directs the Center of Domestic and Comparative Policy Studies. He is the author of The Politics of Exclusion and Profits and Politics in Paradise: The Development of Hilton Head Island.

Table of Contents

257

	List of Tables
	List of Figures
	List of Abbreviations
	Preface
Ch. 1	Places to Play	3
Ch. 2	Urban Games	19
Ch. 3	Market Tests	36
Ch. 4	Private Businesses	51
Ch. 5	Business Partners	68
Ch. 6	Teams in Leagues	83
Ch. 7	Big League Cities	102
Ch. 8	Competing for Teams	117
Ch. 9	Changing Places	134
Ch. 10	Playing for Keeps	152
Ch. 11	The Expanding Realm	169
Ch. 12	Making the Cut	185
Ch. 13	Back Door Play	202
Ch. 14	Ballpark Figures	218
Ch. 15	Newer, Bigger, Better	235
Ch. 16	Political Players	253
Ch. 17	Political Contests	272
Ch. 18	Private Games and Public Stakes	287
	Appendix: Places and Team Names	307
	Notes	323
	Note on Sources
	Index	379

What People are Saying About This

Steven Riess

The author's analysis is first-rate. Experts and general readers will learn quite a bit from this book.

James Quirk

Danielson brings to this book a life-long interest in sports as a dedicated fan. Drawing upon insights from economics,political science,and urban studies,as well as popular sports literature and business history,the author provides an account that will inform and entertain all readers interested in the phenomenon of professional teams.

From the Publisher

"The author's analysis is first-rate. Experts and general readers will learn quite a bit from this book."—Steven Riess, author of City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports

"Danielson brings to this book a life-long interest in sports as a dedicated fan. Drawing upon insights from economics, political science, and urban studies, as well as popular sports literature and business history, the author provides an account that will inform and entertain all readers interested in the phenomenon of professional teams."—James Quirk, author of Pay Dirt: The Business of Professional Team Sports.

Editorial Reviews

"It will be the authority on the subject for a long time coming."—-Frank Deford, Newsweek

From the Publisher

Danielson has ingested an enormous amount of information and come up with some interesting observations.

Chicago Tribune - Allen Barra

Fascinating historical evidence presented in a fluid writing style.

Philadelphia Inquirer - John R. Thelin

Danielson examines every side of the business of sport, from ceilings on player salaries to leases on grounds, to cable TV rights. . . . [His] account . . . could not be more timely or relevant.

New Statesman - Albert Scardino

It will be the authority on the subject for a long time coming.

Newsweek - Frank Deford

Danielson has ingested an enormous amount of information and come up with some interesting observations.
— Allen Barra

Chicago Tribune

Fascinating historical evidence presented in a fluid writing style.
— John R. Thelin

Philadelphia Inquirer

Danielson examines every side of the business of sport, from ceilings on player salaries to leases on grounds, to cable TV rights. . . . [His] account . . . could not be more timely or relevant.
— Albert Scardino

New Statesman

It will be the authority on the subject for a long time coming.
— Frank Deford

Newsweek

Fascinating historical evidence presented in a fluid writing style.
— John R. Thelin

Philadelpia Inquirer

In America, a professional sports team tends to play a big part in the emotional life of its host city; it nearly broke New York's heart when the city's beloved Brooklyn Dodgers threw it over for L.A. Michael Danielson knows all about home-team loyalty; growing up in Brooklyn in the '50s, the Dodgers were his first love. In this book, he combines that personal interest with a professional one in urban politics.

Washington Post Book World

When the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars each came within a game of Super Bowl XXXI earlier this year, observers of the National Football League speculated that the two-year-old clubs benefited from an overly generous draft system. Not coincidentally, both teams also faced an all-out support blitz from local fans and political leaders. The relationship between professional baseball, basketball, football and hockey and the cities in which those sports are played is the focus of this academic and only occasionally intriguing book. Danielson's source material often is dated, but the professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University redeems himself by offering details of Major League baseball's projected 1998 expansion and stories behind other sports' recent expansion teams. Danielson makes some mistakes that color the book, like persistently calling the Carolina's Panthers the Cougars, the name of that state's American Basketball Association teamdefunct for 25 years. Don't look here for juicy insider info that will make die-hard fans sit still for several hundred pages of textbook-like writing, detailed source notes and an appendix of every home-team city in the United States and Canada since 1871. Danielson (Profits and Politics in Paradise: The Development of Hilton Head Island) fails to offer more than a handful of compelling arguments and takes a hands-off approach to reporting such business of sport as shared revenues, salary caps, competition for teams, relocation strategies and television rights. The athletes themselves don't even matter here. But despite its faults, Home Team has the power to agitate thinking sports fans with its overwhelming message that dollars and cents mean more to professional sports today than do home runs, touchdowns, goals and free throws. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly