With the world series upon us, we need some baseball labor blogging.  Over the summer I read the late Bill Veeck’s autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck. People remember him for sending Eddie Gaedel (pictured) up to bat when he owned the St. Louis Browns.  He actually hired Gaedel for a variety of promotions, but this is the one people remember.

What struck me, reading the book, was that Veeck was a man of the people, and he had a trade unionist’s heart. In the 1930s, while he was still an employee and not an owner, he organized a vendors union in Chicago so that the people selling crackerjack and beer “would be guaranteed a living wage and the clubs would be guaranteed a professional working force.”  He also tried to put together a couple of deals with unions to buy ball clubs, including a negotiation with Walter Reuther (and after that, with James Hoffa Sr.) over a partnership to buy the Detroit Tigers. I think the UAW strike fund could still afford to make that purchase. Veeck passed away in 1986, but his son Mike won an award for best promotion in a minor league ballpark this year.

Also, if you are interested in a book on the labor struggles within baseball, John Helyar’s Lords of the Realm is a great read.