Welcome
I received my JD from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1991 and BA from Tulane University in 1988. I'm currently a Professor of Law at the Villanova University School of Law and a Professor in the Jeffrey S. Moorad Center for the Study of Sports Law at Villanova, which I helped to create. My scholarship focuses primarily on the intersection of sports, law, and society and in 2020 I was the recipient of the Diane E. Ambler '78 Faculty Scholarship Impact Award, an annual Villanova Law School honor recognizing faculty whose work has had a significant impact beyond the gates of Villanova. I have written numerous articles examining the interplay between, most notably, baseball and American culture. My article, "The Irrelevance of Baseball's Antitrust Exemption: A Historical Review," won the 2006 McFarland-SABR Award which is presented in recognition of the best historical or biographical baseball articles of the year. My 2008 book, The Fall of the 1977 Phillies: How a Baseball Team's Collapse Sank a City's Spirit (McFarland), is a social history of 20th century Philadelphia as told through the relationship between the city and its baseball teams – the Athletics and the Phillies. In 2009 I was the co-producer and writer of "Base Ball: The Philadelphia Game," a documentary "webisode" on the 19th century development of the game within the city that was part of a larger documentary project, "Philadelphia: The Great Experiment." In addition, I was a scholarly advisor to the 2011 HBO production, "The Curious Case of Curt Flood." In 2012 I published, "A People's History of Baseball" (University of Illinois Press), and in 2015 co-authored the textbook: "Understanding Baseball" (McFarland). In 2013 my article, "Who Exempted Baseball, Anyway?: The Curious Development of the Antitrust Exemption that Never Was," was published in the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law and won the 2013 McFarland-SABR award. My biography of the mercurial slugger Dick Allen, "God Almighty Hisself: The Life and Legacy of Dick Allen," was published in March, 2016 by the University of Pennsylvania Press and was a finalist for the 2017 Seymour Medal, which honors the best baseball biographies of the year. In the years since its publication I've spoken frequently on the topics of Dick Allen, race, and Philadelphia. In 2022 God Almighty Hisself was named one of "The 100 Best Baseball Books Ever Written," by Esquire Magazine. My last book, "Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original," was released in 2020 and was a New York Times Summer Reading selection. Like God Almighty Hisself, it was a Seymour Medal finalist. In addition, it was a silver medalist for the 2021 CASEY Award, honoring the best baseball books of the year. My op-eds have appeared in, among other outlets, The Washington Post, Slate, New York Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and USA Today, which on May 20, 2020 published my piece: "My Son Was Born on 9/11 – Now He's Graduating High School in a Global Pandemic," wherein I examined the letters I wrote to my son every year on his birthday and which, looking back on them, traced the tragic path of how we as a nation traveled from there to here. My new book, "Under Jackie's Shadow: Voices of Black Minor Leaguers Baseball Left Behind" uncovers, in their own words, the histories of the African American men who played minor league ball in the post-Jackie Robinson era of the 1960s and '70s. It hits the shelves in April, 2024.