If baseball is the heart of America, the legal process provides the sinews that hold it in place. It was the legal process that allowed William Hulbert to bring club owners together in a New York City hotel room in 1876 to form the National League, and ninety years later, it allowed Marvin Miller to change a management-funded fraternity of ballplayers into the strongest trade union in America.

But how does collective bargaining and labor arbitration work in the major leagues? Why is baseball exempt from the antitrust laws? In Legal Bases, Roger Abrams has assembled an all-star baseball law team whose stories illuminate the sometimes uproarious, sometimes ignominious relationship between law and baseball that has made the business of baseball a truly American institution.

Roger I. Abrams is a major league baseball salary arbitrator who has arbitrated such cases as those involving Ron Darling and Brett Butler. He is also Dan and Richardson Professor of Law at Northeastern University School of Law and has taught and written in the field of sports law for more than a decade. He is the author of The Money Pitch, also published by Temple University.