Branch Rickey is the closest thing to a genius that baseball produced. He created the concept of the farm system, developed the first baseball academies and was responsible for the integration of baseball with the signing of Jackie Robinson in 1945. His last attempted contribution to the game he loved, The Continental League, forms the subject of a study by Michael Shapiro, author of the wonderful study of the 1956 baseball pennant race: "The Last Good Season."

In his new book, Shapiro argues baseball was in trouble by the late 1950s. Attendance was declining and professional football was emerging as a challenger for the sports fan. Baseball had yet to figure out how to take advantage of television to generate wealth and create new fans. Even the move of the Dodgers and Giants to the untapped wealth of California hadn't reversed many of baseball's troubles. More important, it had left baseball's biggest city without a National League franchise. The dominance of the Yankees was taking a toll in fan interest. Between 1949 and 1957 the Yankees won eight pennants and six World Series. The majors lacked competitive balance.

Beginning in 1958 Rickey came up with a plan to save baseball by the creation of the Continental League. The league would be supported by wealthy investors in cities of major-league caliber that the Lords of Baseball had neglected: Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Minneapolis, Buffalo. New York would be given one of the franchises in the new league.

With typical thoroughness Rickey had lined up the money, the cities and even the political support of Congress behind his new league. What he didn't count on was the determination of the major league owners, particularly Del Webb of the Yankees and Walter O'Malley of the Dodgers along with their agent, Commissioner Ford Frick, to thwart his plan.

Major league baseball led Rickey and his allies along until they were ready to expand on their own terms in 1961 and 1962. They put franchises into many of the same cities that Rickey had planned on for his new league: New York, Minneapolis, Houston. Some of the more successful financial backers of the Continental League were admitted to the ranks of the Lords of Baseball.

Shapiro argues that by expanding the way it did, major league baseball lost a golden opportunity to revive the sport. Professional football in the meantime created a new league, the American Football League, and decided to share television revenue among the teams. Football's explosion of popularity began in the 1960s and, as Shapiro notes, replaced baseball as America's most popular sport. Today, for example, a professional football franchise is worth on average $957 million, a figure double the value of the average baseball franchise.

Shapiro's study is by far the best investigation of the failure of the Continental League. It is based on a thorough knowledge of baseball's past and an exhaustive examination of the key sources for the topic.

Some of the best and most enjoyable chapters, those on the 1958, '59 and 1960 seasons, have little to do with the story of the Continental League. Shapiro has his heroes and villains: Rickey and William Shea, who was instrumental in getting a team for New York, and for whom the Mets baseball stadium was named, are among those whom Shapiro admires. The villains are many: Del Webb of the Yankees; Frick, who misled Rickey; and of course Walter O'Malley, every baseball fans' favorite scoundrel.

Shapiro, I believe, overstates what happened to baseball by not accepting the Continental League. Baseball has thrived since the 1960s despite two terrible strikes. The sport finally learned how to exploit television, placed franchises in key cities throughout the nation and has seen attendance boom in recent years.

It seems doubtful that the creation of eight teams in the Continental League, given the talent pool available, would have saved baseball from the challenge of other sports. If Shapiro occasionally pushes his thesis too far, he still has written a fascinating piece on a long neglected aspect of baseball's past.