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  • Making It in the Minors: A Team Owner’s Lessons in the Business of Baseball by Arthur P. Solomon
  • William Harris Ressler
Arthur P. Solomon (with Allyn I. Freeman), Making It in the Minors: A Team Owner’s Lessons in the Business of Baseball. Jefferson nc: McFarland, 2012. 197 pp. Paper, $29.95.

Arthur P. Solomon could have written a thorough and detailed textbook explaining the economics of baseball, full of rich data and extensive citations—he does, after all, hold a Harvard PhD in economics—but that type of book, such as J. C. Bradbury’s The Baseball Economist, already exists. He could have written a business standard—he spent years at the highest levels of Wall Street’s premier investment firms, following a tenured academic career at mit where he taught economics, urban planning, and finance—but books such as David Carter’s Money Games have already taken an unblended business approach. He could have written an anecdote-filled autobiography describing his personal journey from leading real estate investor to owner of the Class aa New Hampshire Fisher Cats and the Class a Bowling Green Hot Rods, but the baseball canon is already full of volumes of personal anecdotes.

Although Making It in the Minors is none of these things, it manages to blend elements of each. Reflecting Solomon’s eclectic career, many talents, and multiple perspectives, it is a guide to how to succeed in the minors. As such, it is a story of who makes up the minors, both individuals and communities. His examples illustrate fundamental principles of the business of the minor leagues but without copious details in which the newcomer might get lost, and he uses people’s stories, his own included, to give those principles context and meaning.

His many perspectives—economics, finance, planning, investment, management—have come together in a book that reflects a systems-thinking approach, drawing the reader’s attention to the many interdependent stakeholders and interconnected structures and processes making up the complex and dynamic system of minor-league baseball. Like Katya Cengel’s Bluegrass Baseball—which coincidentally includes a lengthy section on Solomon’s Hot Rods—Making It in the Minors introduces readers to the diverse people on whom minor-league baseball depends yet who are infrequently recognized as essential to its success. They include, in particular, members of the community: business owners, media professionals, politicians, school administrators, local ethnic and religious groups, and community organizers.

Thus, when Solomon discusses his experiences as an owner, he makes broader points about the nature of minor-league baseball and reinforces his systems-thinking approach to buying and running a team. Buying a team means carefully considering the diverse system of elements that influence the [End Page 172] team’s future success, including the physical facility, the economic and social makeup of the community, the competition for entertainment dollars, the interests of local politicians, businesses and charities, current relations with the major-league parent, potential relations with other minor-league teams nationally as well as other sports teams locally, and even anticipated support and reactions of family, friends, and colleagues. Running a team means creatively and strategically bringing together these various elements, understanding that (1) any single outcome can be attained through alternative strategic combinations of these various parts of the system, and (2) any single strategy can yield alternative outcomes. His discussions of promotions and team names, for example, move beyond the direct, linear impact of isolated tactical choices on fans’ perceptions and reactions; he explains the strategic, holistic implications of different choices and the different potential meanings and influences of those choices for the varied individuals and institutions who make up the surrounding community.

His communication approach is focused and strategic. His focus on brand, for example, anticipates MiLB’s recent efforts to position itself through “Project Brand.” His delineation of the many and diverse strategic partners necessary for a team to succeed demonstrates his appreciation for the convergent interests of sets of stakeholders: “I am a great believer in selling clients what they need, not what we have to sell” (68, emphasis in original). It also reveals his holistic approach to community and to the wider...

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