Home Team: Professional Sports and the American Metropolis

Description

This text studies the connections between professional team sports in North America and the places where teams play. It examines the relationship between the four major team sports - baseball, basketball, football and hockey - and the cities that attach their names, hearts and an increasing amount of tax dollars to big league teams. From the names on the 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 the 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. The author 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 t

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.

"It will be the authority on the subject for a long time coming."--Frank Deford, Newsweek "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 "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 "Fascinating historical evidence presented in a fluid writing style."--John R. Thelin, Philadelpia Inquirer "Danielson has ingested an enormous amount of information and come up with some interesting observations."--Allen Barra, Chicago Tribune