I recently read John Helyar’s 1994 baseball classic Lords of the Realm. Somehow, I had never heard of it until I spotted it on a baseball top-ten list. If you haven’t read it and want to avoid spoilers, stop here, go buy the book, and return after you’ve finished. That might sound dramatic, but after a few chapters, all I could think was: How on earth did I not know about this years ago?

Helyar—who gained fame as the co-author of the blockbuster Barbarians at the Gate—brings the same level of meticulous research to Realm. Being a child of the 1960s and ’70s and having lived through much of what he describes is certainly an advantage, but hardly a requirement.

Helyar masterfully guides the reader through the origins of baseball’s labor conflicts—or, for decades, the total lack of them. Fo

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