About this item
When baseball's reserve clause was struck down in late 1975 and ushered in free agency, club owners feared it would ruin the game; instead, there seemed to be no end to the "baseball fever" that would grip America. In Gathering Crowds: Catching Baseball Fever in the New Era of Free Agency, Paul Hensler details how baseball grew and evolved from the late 1970s through the 1980s. Trepidation that without the reserve clause only wealthy teams would succeed diminished when small-market clubs in Minnesota, Kansas City, and Boston found their way to pennants and World Series titles. The proliferation of games broadcast on cable and satellite systems seemed to create a thirst for more baseball rather than discourage fans from going to the ballpark.
About the Author
Paul Hensler is a baseball historian and long-time member of the Society for American Baseball Research. He has a Master's Degree in History from Trinity College (Hartford, CT) , and his work has appeared in SABR's Baseball Research Journal and NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture. Paul has also presented numerous times at the annual Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture as well as the 2012 and 2017 National SABR Conventions.
