The Detroit Tigers: Club and Community 1945–1995 by Patrick Harrigan (review)

Book Reviews 209 education while the economic environment continues to demand even more highly trained and specialized graduates. How can American colleges and universities stem the tide of fragmentation of knowledge, over specialization and the demand for "credentials" while at the same time provide students with an education that broadens their minds, and promotes a general engagement with the society as a whole? This question is not new and Lucas rightly traces its origins to the industrial and economic transformation of the United States beginning in the mid-nineteenth century. Because of Lucas's stated avoidance of interpretation over synthesis, however, an answer to this question based on the historical record is not offered. In the epilogue, Lucas outlines the views of prominent liberal and conservative critics of American higher education and comes close to agreeing with those, such as Michael Apple, who view legitimate knowledge as the result of complex power struggles between classes, races, gender, and religious groups. For Lucas, how these relationships affect institutional change "awaits further investigation" (314). Overall, Lucas provides a highly readable narrative of the historical development of higher education in the United States. His book is an excellent introduction to the subject and would be a useful place to start for anyone new to the subject not wishing to wade through the stacks of more specific studies of institutions or time periods. Alexander Urbiel RL.unapoCollege o( New Jersey Patrick Harrigan. The Detroit Tigers: Club and Community 1945-1995. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Pp. xxxii + 415 and bibliography and illustrations. "Baseball,11 Patrick Harrigan says in his great opening line, "is a boys' game played by men and run by promoters for profit." In a few words, he says just about all there is to say, offers his thesis, and sums up the attraction of the great game to players, spectators, and profiteers. The beauty of baseball is that it can be played indifferently by anyone, male or female, young or old, thus making everyone an expert. But it can be played at a Major League 210 Canadian Review of American Studies Revue ca.nadienne d'etudes amlmcames level only by a few hundred young men of supreme skills. It all looks so easy -to hit a baseball safely three times in ten, something that foreigners might think surely is simple enough to do, is sufficient to make a twenty-year-old into a multimillionaire. To catch fly balls in left field looks routine, merely triangulating the height, direction, and speed of the ball and getting your body and glove into position. Simple, until you try to do it. To beat out a grounder to third seems no challenge, yet so perfect are the field's dimensions that the speediest runner can be thrown out nine times in ten even by an indifferent infielder. Baseball, in other words, attracts us because we can master some of its skills just enough to appreciate the genius of those who play it well. Patrick Harrigan is a fan, enough of an addict of the game that._he was willing to spend years away from his specialty in European history to work on the Detroit Tigers. His task was not easy. Professional sport is not a subject with much standing in history departments or with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada which caused him difficulties but ultimately-and rightly-supported his research. Happily, Harrigan persisted and, although this book is not gracefully written, it is an astonishing effort at data collection, the single best repository available on the operations of a professional sports franchise. In his massive bibliography, his array of notes, his tables and appendices, Harrigan lays bare the financial structure of the Tigers over a half-century. We can trace the growth in ticket prices (not quite so much as I would have expected) and the way players' salaries have captured increasing percentages of team revenues over the years. As recently as 1974, salaries absorbed only seventeen percent of Tiger revenues, but by 1993, they were up to forty-eight percent and the average player was a millionaire. Baseball is a statisticians' dream game and Harrigan 's book is a...