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Make Me Commissioner: I Know What's Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It
“Make Jane Commissioner… Leavy has a voice demanding to be heard—and Major League Baseball should listen.”
— THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
A New York Times bestselling biographer and lifelong baseball devotee takes readers on an epic journey through the game that baseball has become— a heartfelt manifesto that's perfect for lovers of the sport.
Jane Leavy has always loved baseball. Her grandmother lived one long, loud foul ball away from Yankee Stadium—the same grandmother who took young Jane to Saks Fifth Avenue and bought her her first baseball glove. It's no coincidence that Leavy was covering the game she loved for the Washington Post by the late 1970s. As a pioneering female sportswriter, she eventually turned her talent to books, penning three of the all-time best baseball biographies about three of the all-time best Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth. But when she went searching for a fourth biographical subject, she realized that baseball had faltered. The Moneyball era of the last two decades obsessed over data and slowed the game down to a crawl, often at the expense of thrills, skills, and surprise. Major League Baseball has begun to address issues too long ignored, yet the questions how much have these efforts helped to improve the game and reassert its place in American culture?
Leavy takes a whirlwind tour of the country seeking answers to these questions, talking with luminaries like Joe Torre, Dave Roberts, Jim Palmer, Dusty Baker, and more. What Leavy uncovers is not only what’s wrong with baseball—and how to fix it—but also what’s right with baseball, and how it illuminates characters, tells stories, and fires up the imagination of those who love it and everyone who could discover it anew.
A New York Times bestselling biographer and lifelong baseball devotee takes readers on an epic journey through the game that baseball has become— a heartfelt manifesto that's perfect for lovers of the sport.
Jane Leavy has always loved baseball. Her grandmother lived one long, loud foul ball away from Yankee Stadium—the same grandmother who took young Jane to Saks Fifth Avenue and bought her her first baseball glove. It's no coincidence that Leavy was covering the game she loved for the Washington Post by the late 1970s. As a pioneering female sportswriter, she eventually turned her talent to books, penning three of the all-time best baseball biographies about three of the all-time best Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth. But when she went searching for a fourth biographical subject, she realized that baseball had faltered. The Moneyball era of the last two decades obsessed over data and slowed the game down to a crawl, often at the expense of thrills, skills, and surprise. Major League Baseball has begun to address issues too long ignored, yet the questions how much have these efforts helped to improve the game and reassert its place in American culture?
Leavy takes a whirlwind tour of the country seeking answers to these questions, talking with luminaries like Joe Torre, Dave Roberts, Jim Palmer, Dusty Baker, and more. What Leavy uncovers is not only what’s wrong with baseball—and how to fix it—but also what’s right with baseball, and how it illuminates characters, tells stories, and fires up the imagination of those who love it and everyone who could discover it anew.
377 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 9, 2025
108 people are currently reading
3326 people want to read
About the author
Jane Leavy
13 books134 followersJane Leavy is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Last Boy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy and the comic novel Squeeze Play, which Entertainment Weekly called “the best novel ever written about baseball.” Her latest book is The Big Fella. She was a staff writer at The Washington Post from 1979 to1988, first in the sports section, then writing for the style section. She covered baseball, tennis, and the Olympics for the paper. She wrote features for the style section about sports, politics, and pop culture, including, most memorably, a profile of Mugsy Bogues, the 5’3″ guard for the Washington Wizards, which was longer than he is tall.
Before joining the The Washington Post, she was a staff writer at womenSports and Self magazines. She has written for many publications, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, The Village Voice, and The New York Daily News. Leavys work has been anthologized in many collections, including Best Sportswriting, Coach: 25 Writers Reflect on People Who Made a Difference, Child of Mine: Essays on Becoming a Mother, Nike Is a Goddess: The History of Women in Sports, Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend: Women Writers on Baseball, A Kind of Grace: A Treasury of Sportswriting by Women, and Making Words Dance: Reflections on Red Smith, Journalism and Writing.
She grew up on Long Island where she pitched briefly and poorly for the Blue Jays of the Roslyn Long Island Little League. On her parents first date, her father, a water boy for the 1927 New York football Giants, took her mother to a Brooklyn College football game. She retaliated by taking him to Loehmanns after the final whistle. It was a template for their 63-year union. As a child, Jane Leavy worshipped Mickey Mantle from the second-floor ballroom in the Concourse Plaza Hotel where her grandmothers synagogue held services on the High Holidays.
Jane Leavy attended Barnard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she wrote her masters essay (later published in The Village Voice) on Red Smith, the late sports columnist for The New York Times, who was her other childhood hero.
She has two adult children, Nick and Emma, and she lives in Washington, DC, and Truro, Massachusetts.
Before joining the The Washington Post, she was a staff writer at womenSports and Self magazines. She has written for many publications, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, The Village Voice, and The New York Daily News. Leavys work has been anthologized in many collections, including Best Sportswriting, Coach: 25 Writers Reflect on People Who Made a Difference, Child of Mine: Essays on Becoming a Mother, Nike Is a Goddess: The History of Women in Sports, Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend: Women Writers on Baseball, A Kind of Grace: A Treasury of Sportswriting by Women, and Making Words Dance: Reflections on Red Smith, Journalism and Writing.
She grew up on Long Island where she pitched briefly and poorly for the Blue Jays of the Roslyn Long Island Little League. On her parents first date, her father, a water boy for the 1927 New York football Giants, took her mother to a Brooklyn College football game. She retaliated by taking him to Loehmanns after the final whistle. It was a template for their 63-year union. As a child, Jane Leavy worshipped Mickey Mantle from the second-floor ballroom in the Concourse Plaza Hotel where her grandmothers synagogue held services on the High Holidays.
Jane Leavy attended Barnard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she wrote her masters essay (later published in The Village Voice) on Red Smith, the late sports columnist for The New York Times, who was her other childhood hero.
She has two adult children, Nick and Emma, and she lives in Washington, DC, and Truro, Massachusetts.
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October 31, 2025
”Baseball has a peculiar problem. Baseball is simultaneously selling a sport that you are watching and a history of the sport.”
”Baseball is never going to be the National Pastime again…Nobody would invent baseball today. It’s far too elegant for our brutalist age.”
I’m past sixty, became a baseball fan in the early 1970s (baseball’s single greatest decade from my perspective) and learned to understand the game off the back of baseball cards. I’m not one of those “get off my lawn!” grumpy old guys who just curses at the idea of analytics in baseball, but I do feel like a dinosaur because the stats that formed my baseball knowledge as a kid (RBIs, batting average, pitcher’s wins, etc.) are no longer valued, and despite attempts at educating myself, I still haven’t mastered a full working understanding of todays analytic stats (OPS, WAR, wOBA, FIP, etc.). On top of that, I’m a lifetime Pittsburgh Pirates fan (only four winning seasons in the last thirty-three years) and a dad to adult sons who are completely disinterested in baseball.
If your baseball story has similarities to mine, you are likely the intended audience for this book. You still love the game, but you are not entirely comfortable with many of the ways it has changed in the last couple of decades, you are worried that young people no longer seem interested in the game, and you suspect that your small market team may have become permanently relegated to a second tier that can never really compete with the insanely wealthy teams. You may even worry that, as a baseball fan, you may soon qualify as an endangered species.
Jane Leavy (who is still upset that her dad left her home when he took her older sister to the final Dodgers game at Ebbets Field when she was five) is also a lifelong baseball fan who is concerned about the state of today’s game, and has some definite opinions on what sort of things need to be done to fix it. In Make Me Commissioner she talks to a plethora of baseball people — executives, coaches, managers, stadium designers, scouts, fans, ushers, players at all levels, to get a sense of exactly how the game has changed (both for good and ill) what has gone wrong, what has been lost sight of, and what should be done to ensure that the sport continues to thrive. She talks to the famous, like Spaceman Bill Lee, Dusty Baker, Jim Palmer, and George Brett. But she also sought out people like Phil Coyne, an usher with the Pittsburgh Pirates for 81 years who worked over 6000 games.
While there is far more of identifying problems than practical solutions to fix them here, the book exudes a true passion for the game. Though that passion is mixed with melancholy and a sense of loss, it still exhibits a fierce love of the game. If you are an aging fan of the game who still loves it even though your relationship with it may have soured, this is a perfect book for you. Consider it therapy.
”Baseball is never going to be the National Pastime again…Nobody would invent baseball today. It’s far too elegant for our brutalist age.”
I’m past sixty, became a baseball fan in the early 1970s (baseball’s single greatest decade from my perspective) and learned to understand the game off the back of baseball cards. I’m not one of those “get off my lawn!” grumpy old guys who just curses at the idea of analytics in baseball, but I do feel like a dinosaur because the stats that formed my baseball knowledge as a kid (RBIs, batting average, pitcher’s wins, etc.) are no longer valued, and despite attempts at educating myself, I still haven’t mastered a full working understanding of todays analytic stats (OPS, WAR, wOBA, FIP, etc.). On top of that, I’m a lifetime Pittsburgh Pirates fan (only four winning seasons in the last thirty-three years) and a dad to adult sons who are completely disinterested in baseball.
If your baseball story has similarities to mine, you are likely the intended audience for this book. You still love the game, but you are not entirely comfortable with many of the ways it has changed in the last couple of decades, you are worried that young people no longer seem interested in the game, and you suspect that your small market team may have become permanently relegated to a second tier that can never really compete with the insanely wealthy teams. You may even worry that, as a baseball fan, you may soon qualify as an endangered species.
Jane Leavy (who is still upset that her dad left her home when he took her older sister to the final Dodgers game at Ebbets Field when she was five) is also a lifelong baseball fan who is concerned about the state of today’s game, and has some definite opinions on what sort of things need to be done to fix it. In Make Me Commissioner she talks to a plethora of baseball people — executives, coaches, managers, stadium designers, scouts, fans, ushers, players at all levels, to get a sense of exactly how the game has changed (both for good and ill) what has gone wrong, what has been lost sight of, and what should be done to ensure that the sport continues to thrive. She talks to the famous, like Spaceman Bill Lee, Dusty Baker, Jim Palmer, and George Brett. But she also sought out people like Phil Coyne, an usher with the Pittsburgh Pirates for 81 years who worked over 6000 games.
While there is far more of identifying problems than practical solutions to fix them here, the book exudes a true passion for the game. Though that passion is mixed with melancholy and a sense of loss, it still exhibits a fierce love of the game. If you are an aging fan of the game who still loves it even though your relationship with it may have soured, this is a perfect book for you. Consider it therapy.
November 11, 2025
Jan. 31, 2021 was when I did my first interview. June 4 is when I sent in the acknowledgments, all the folks who hung with me throughout the process. I hope you'll agree with Dodger manager Dave Roberts when I told him, "when I'm in charge, they'll be dance floors and day care in every major league ballpark and kids age 10 and younger will get in free" and he said, "y'know, you should be commissioner." I hope you'll agree. jl
September 18, 2025
Jane Leavy knows her baseball. But, since her days as a Washington Post sportswriter, she’s made Jane Leavy part of the story. In her first, fantastic, biography, this made perfect sense: Koufax, like Jane, is Jewish, and her understanding of Jewish tradition and the impact on American Jews of Koufax refusing to pitch in the 1965 World Series on Yom Kippur was valuable. The subject of next (very good) bio, Mickey Mantle, vaguely tried to pick her up, and wound up falling dead drunk in her lap in the Atlantic City bar of the casino where the Mick was a Greeter—Jane involuntarily became part of Mantle’s skirt chasing, alcoholic story.
Not only is this book not a biography, its title is misleading as well. Oh, there is a unifying theme: rule changes over 55 years attempting to make baseball better [check that] more commercial. Yet the book actually is a series of loosely interconnected short non-fiction chapters as she goes from town-to-town talking with the players and managers with whom she became friends, plus Dan Okrent, Bill James, and an MIT statistics Prof.
So, if it’s money you have, and vignettes seek, this book is a pleasant diversion:
Former Braves Pitching Coach Leo Mazzone: “One year after he retired, Greg Maddux asked if he could talk to our young pitchers in spring training. He said, ‘You know why I’m a millionaire? Because I can put my fastball where I want to. You know why I got beachfront property in LA? Because I can change speeds.’ End of conversation.” (The author adds: “Today, they’d laugh at him.” Curiously, she doesn’t explain that sentence, but I’d imagine it’s a combination of the fact that no one else could pitch exactly where he wanted with Maddox’s consistency, and today’s Maddox’s fastball (which never topped 93 mph) probably wouldn’t get him a major league contract.)
“Baseball lives at the intersection of history, memory, and nostalgia.”
For that reason, Jane dislikes the Sabermetrics made public in Michael Lewis’s “Moneyball.” She quotes ex-Washington National Ryan Zimmerman: “Try telling [players] you need a sacrifice fly. ‘Oh, no, man. That doesn’t go to OPS [On Base+Slugging]. I gotta get paid.’ Makes it hard to teach.” (Jane elsewhere mentions Bill James, and Orioles manager Earl Weaver (who she adored), like Lewis, hated wasting outs on sacrifices.) Interestingly, however, Jane says Dan Okrent (another close pal) believes the “commodization” of baseball players (in the sense of Scott Hatteberg) wasn’t product of Moneyball but rather Baseball’s 1976 Collective Bargaining Agreement, which codified Free agency. It was that, Okrent said, that allowed him to invent Fantasy Baseball.
Now almost every team has an owner or GM who’s a “numbers guy.” (It’s worth noting the Red Sox didn’t break the “Curse of the Bambino” and win a World Series until numbers geek Theo Epstein was GM.) Yet that appalls Ms Leavy: “Forget the Oriole Way or Cardinals baseball. There’s only one way. The uniformity in baseball exists for the same reason pop songs sound alike and SUVs look the same: an algorithm has determined what works best rhythmically and aerodynamically.…Gone is the drama that made it a joy to write and read about baseball. Now anticipation is a function of execution, not of strategy or tactics. …Author Rebecca Solnit calls [attempting never to be wrong] ‘a stick with which to beat the possible.’ And technology is its cudgel.” [Not sure how Leavy avoided mentioning baseball bats there.]
Predictably, the author hates Robo-umps. She believes mistakes are part of the game. [When they cost you a perfect game, a world series, or any call when Angel Hernandez still was on the field?] A modified system of challenges (which has been used in the minors and spring training for some time will be in service for the 2026 season. Leavy tells a hilarious incident where Jacob Heyward (Jason’s younger brother) was thrown out of an Arizona fall league game by a robo-ump making all calls: “The pitch that caused the ruckus was a curveball that broke down and in on him for strike three. To my eyes, it was a ball. He thought so too, and protested vehemently but not violently. The human ump, the vehicle for delivering a call he didn’t make, took up for the robot and threw Jacob out of the game for arguing balls and strikes. ‘I wasn’t even talking to you,’ Jacob protested.”
Leavy devotes pages to the relatively new “travel leagues,” which apparently have replaced Little League. On the plus side, these travel leagues are well organized and supplied—almost the minor leagues of the minor leagues. Yet, these travel teams are hugely competitive (tough on 13 year olds), and are—not unexpectedly—a new forum for parental fulfillment through their children, and the more wealthy the family, the better equipped, and more funds they have for travel. Jane calls this “pay-to-play childhood…a vast sports industrial complex.” The top levels are crowded not with the best players, but with kids rich enough to travel to the most games. This also, as a general matter, has the effect (though not the intent) of squeezing Black children out of the best travel leagues. This may be why Major League Baseball, once 20% Black, now is more like 5%. The book discusses at length Black travel leagues attempting to right this balance.
Leavy spends chapters with Dusty Baker. He’s a crusty old fellow, who finally retired a few years ago, after about a half century as player and manager (wining at least one in each role that I remember). [Jane probably knew him best from when he managed the Nationals.] People like Dusty are “quote machines,” and Jane elicits some, including when he asked legendary Michigan Football coach Bo Schembechler how to select talent at the marginal (25th man) level. “‘Nuts and guts.’ He says, ‘Dusty, it’s in the fucking face—it’s in the FUCKING face!’ I said, ‘What do you mean it’s in the face?’ He said, ‘You look him in his eyes, and you can see to his soul. You can tell who the bullshitter is. You can tell who’s scared. You could tell who has guts and nuts.’” Baker goes on to explain that this forms the basis for his response to the “‘punk boys upstairs…because all they see is numbers. They can’t even see the soul.’” [Leavy never addresses the rap on Dusty as a manager: that he overused starting pitchers—possibly because starters pitched complete games or at least seven innings when Dusty was a player—thereby shortening their careers.]
In the last two chapters, Jane randomly tosses out some ideas, many of which already are employed, if not mandated. Such as showing OPS along with batting average on the scoreboard. She would mandate wooden bats at every level of baseball—including (somehow) convincing colleges to relinquish aluminum. Jane doesn’t like the pitch clock, but really hates commercials and the fact that batters, but not pitchers, get one time out (each, in different ways, stress pitcher’s arms). Her solution: return to the 75 seconds of commercials between innings (this was the rule until about 20 years ago), add two long six minute breaks after the third and sixth innings—giving viewers a bathroom break—and allow pitchers one “step off the mound” time out per batter. She also would expand the roster to add more pitchers—but only those who had not pitched more than two innings the previous day would be able to pitch on any given day.
Make Me Commissioner would be much better if Ms Leavy set out, say, in an appendix, her proposed baseball rule changes. Absent that, this book is a charming, if scatter-brained stream-of-consciousness of Jane and her baseball pals playing “Clue”: will it be the pitch clock? The commercials? The rosters? The pitchers? Time outs? The bats themselves? Convincing the Major Leagues to standardize, if not fund directly, the travel teams? Jane leaves the proof to the student, which makes this book fun to read, but ultimately unconvincing.
Not only is this book not a biography, its title is misleading as well. Oh, there is a unifying theme: rule changes over 55 years attempting to make baseball better [check that] more commercial. Yet the book actually is a series of loosely interconnected short non-fiction chapters as she goes from town-to-town talking with the players and managers with whom she became friends, plus Dan Okrent, Bill James, and an MIT statistics Prof.
So, if it’s money you have, and vignettes seek, this book is a pleasant diversion:
Former Braves Pitching Coach Leo Mazzone: “One year after he retired, Greg Maddux asked if he could talk to our young pitchers in spring training. He said, ‘You know why I’m a millionaire? Because I can put my fastball where I want to. You know why I got beachfront property in LA? Because I can change speeds.’ End of conversation.” (The author adds: “Today, they’d laugh at him.” Curiously, she doesn’t explain that sentence, but I’d imagine it’s a combination of the fact that no one else could pitch exactly where he wanted with Maddox’s consistency, and today’s Maddox’s fastball (which never topped 93 mph) probably wouldn’t get him a major league contract.)
“Baseball lives at the intersection of history, memory, and nostalgia.”
For that reason, Jane dislikes the Sabermetrics made public in Michael Lewis’s “Moneyball.” She quotes ex-Washington National Ryan Zimmerman: “Try telling [players] you need a sacrifice fly. ‘Oh, no, man. That doesn’t go to OPS [On Base+Slugging]. I gotta get paid.’ Makes it hard to teach.” (Jane elsewhere mentions Bill James, and Orioles manager Earl Weaver (who she adored), like Lewis, hated wasting outs on sacrifices.) Interestingly, however, Jane says Dan Okrent (another close pal) believes the “commodization” of baseball players (in the sense of Scott Hatteberg) wasn’t product of Moneyball but rather Baseball’s 1976 Collective Bargaining Agreement, which codified Free agency. It was that, Okrent said, that allowed him to invent Fantasy Baseball.
Now almost every team has an owner or GM who’s a “numbers guy.” (It’s worth noting the Red Sox didn’t break the “Curse of the Bambino” and win a World Series until numbers geek Theo Epstein was GM.) Yet that appalls Ms Leavy: “Forget the Oriole Way or Cardinals baseball. There’s only one way. The uniformity in baseball exists for the same reason pop songs sound alike and SUVs look the same: an algorithm has determined what works best rhythmically and aerodynamically.…Gone is the drama that made it a joy to write and read about baseball. Now anticipation is a function of execution, not of strategy or tactics. …Author Rebecca Solnit calls [attempting never to be wrong] ‘a stick with which to beat the possible.’ And technology is its cudgel.” [Not sure how Leavy avoided mentioning baseball bats there.]
Predictably, the author hates Robo-umps. She believes mistakes are part of the game. [When they cost you a perfect game, a world series, or any call when Angel Hernandez still was on the field?] A modified system of challenges (which has been used in the minors and spring training for some time will be in service for the 2026 season. Leavy tells a hilarious incident where Jacob Heyward (Jason’s younger brother) was thrown out of an Arizona fall league game by a robo-ump making all calls: “The pitch that caused the ruckus was a curveball that broke down and in on him for strike three. To my eyes, it was a ball. He thought so too, and protested vehemently but not violently. The human ump, the vehicle for delivering a call he didn’t make, took up for the robot and threw Jacob out of the game for arguing balls and strikes. ‘I wasn’t even talking to you,’ Jacob protested.”
Leavy devotes pages to the relatively new “travel leagues,” which apparently have replaced Little League. On the plus side, these travel leagues are well organized and supplied—almost the minor leagues of the minor leagues. Yet, these travel teams are hugely competitive (tough on 13 year olds), and are—not unexpectedly—a new forum for parental fulfillment through their children, and the more wealthy the family, the better equipped, and more funds they have for travel. Jane calls this “pay-to-play childhood…a vast sports industrial complex.” The top levels are crowded not with the best players, but with kids rich enough to travel to the most games. This also, as a general matter, has the effect (though not the intent) of squeezing Black children out of the best travel leagues. This may be why Major League Baseball, once 20% Black, now is more like 5%. The book discusses at length Black travel leagues attempting to right this balance.
Leavy spends chapters with Dusty Baker. He’s a crusty old fellow, who finally retired a few years ago, after about a half century as player and manager (wining at least one in each role that I remember). [Jane probably knew him best from when he managed the Nationals.] People like Dusty are “quote machines,” and Jane elicits some, including when he asked legendary Michigan Football coach Bo Schembechler how to select talent at the marginal (25th man) level. “‘Nuts and guts.’ He says, ‘Dusty, it’s in the fucking face—it’s in the FUCKING face!’ I said, ‘What do you mean it’s in the face?’ He said, ‘You look him in his eyes, and you can see to his soul. You can tell who the bullshitter is. You can tell who’s scared. You could tell who has guts and nuts.’” Baker goes on to explain that this forms the basis for his response to the “‘punk boys upstairs…because all they see is numbers. They can’t even see the soul.’” [Leavy never addresses the rap on Dusty as a manager: that he overused starting pitchers—possibly because starters pitched complete games or at least seven innings when Dusty was a player—thereby shortening their careers.]
In the last two chapters, Jane randomly tosses out some ideas, many of which already are employed, if not mandated. Such as showing OPS along with batting average on the scoreboard. She would mandate wooden bats at every level of baseball—including (somehow) convincing colleges to relinquish aluminum. Jane doesn’t like the pitch clock, but really hates commercials and the fact that batters, but not pitchers, get one time out (each, in different ways, stress pitcher’s arms). Her solution: return to the 75 seconds of commercials between innings (this was the rule until about 20 years ago), add two long six minute breaks after the third and sixth innings—giving viewers a bathroom break—and allow pitchers one “step off the mound” time out per batter. She also would expand the roster to add more pitchers—but only those who had not pitched more than two innings the previous day would be able to pitch on any given day.
Make Me Commissioner would be much better if Ms Leavy set out, say, in an appendix, her proposed baseball rule changes. Absent that, this book is a charming, if scatter-brained stream-of-consciousness of Jane and her baseball pals playing “Clue”: will it be the pitch clock? The commercials? The rosters? The pitchers? Time outs? The bats themselves? Convincing the Major Leagues to standardize, if not fund directly, the travel teams? Jane leaves the proof to the student, which makes this book fun to read, but ultimately unconvincing.
January 8, 2026
I am not the target audience for this book.
October 26, 2025
A more apt title for this book: Veteran Sportswriter Yells at Cloud, or Late-Career Journalist Anecdote-A-Thon.
Levy has done her job as a baseball writer well and has written some sports fiction that is worth a read. This, though? Feels like a “here’s what I had leftover that I haven’t been able to use in previous publications.”
There’s a lot of cutesy baseball anecdotes (some charming, some that feel very passé), a lot of name dropping, and a lot of explaining and opining on relatively basic baseball talking points that most of those who follow the sport are already very familiar with. There’s also a lot of Boomer energy going on here which, to be fair, is so very baseball, but also feels a bit off-putting to a significant segment of the sport’s audience, especially those under the age of about 50.
But the real issue here is that there just isn’t anything about this that says Jane Leavy *should* be a candidate for commissioner.
She addresses a lot of frequent talking points favored by fans and journalists and most of the time her perspective is relatable and probably agreeable to where most enthusiasts of the sport would like to see it go.
But she’s not saying anything concrete about *how* to fix the game. Any solutions proposed are the same ones anyone who spends a lot of time watching the game comes up with, so they’re not a demonstration of any kind of expertise in terms of identifying problems, or solving them.
There’s nothing here that offers anything concrete about how to actually fix those problems from the kind of perspective that someone in the commissioner’s role needs to take. In other words, while a fan or writer might agree with these perspectives, a commissioner (who is technically an employee of MLB’s 30 owners) needs to propose the kinds of solutions that might be amenable to those people and thus actually have a fighting chance of being implemented.
Beyond this, I guess I’m just pretty sick of the Get Off My Lawn approach to baseball journalism. Perpetually insisting that there’s something wrong with baseball is a timeworn practice that has existed since the 1800s, but it’s also tired and feels a bit like an excuse to nitpick at a game that is largely very successful and that readers (and the author) clearly love.
This isn’t to suggest that baseball can’t be improved in any way or that I don’t agree with some of Leavy’s ideas on how to do that. But I don’t particularly need another baseball book that is half old timer memories and half list of grievances, especially when the how to fix the game of it all isn’t presented in a manner which is practically applicable.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
Levy has done her job as a baseball writer well and has written some sports fiction that is worth a read. This, though? Feels like a “here’s what I had leftover that I haven’t been able to use in previous publications.”
There’s a lot of cutesy baseball anecdotes (some charming, some that feel very passé), a lot of name dropping, and a lot of explaining and opining on relatively basic baseball talking points that most of those who follow the sport are already very familiar with. There’s also a lot of Boomer energy going on here which, to be fair, is so very baseball, but also feels a bit off-putting to a significant segment of the sport’s audience, especially those under the age of about 50.
But the real issue here is that there just isn’t anything about this that says Jane Leavy *should* be a candidate for commissioner.
She addresses a lot of frequent talking points favored by fans and journalists and most of the time her perspective is relatable and probably agreeable to where most enthusiasts of the sport would like to see it go.
But she’s not saying anything concrete about *how* to fix the game. Any solutions proposed are the same ones anyone who spends a lot of time watching the game comes up with, so they’re not a demonstration of any kind of expertise in terms of identifying problems, or solving them.
There’s nothing here that offers anything concrete about how to actually fix those problems from the kind of perspective that someone in the commissioner’s role needs to take. In other words, while a fan or writer might agree with these perspectives, a commissioner (who is technically an employee of MLB’s 30 owners) needs to propose the kinds of solutions that might be amenable to those people and thus actually have a fighting chance of being implemented.
Beyond this, I guess I’m just pretty sick of the Get Off My Lawn approach to baseball journalism. Perpetually insisting that there’s something wrong with baseball is a timeworn practice that has existed since the 1800s, but it’s also tired and feels a bit like an excuse to nitpick at a game that is largely very successful and that readers (and the author) clearly love.
This isn’t to suggest that baseball can’t be improved in any way or that I don’t agree with some of Leavy’s ideas on how to do that. But I don’t particularly need another baseball book that is half old timer memories and half list of grievances, especially when the how to fix the game of it all isn’t presented in a manner which is practically applicable.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
September 7, 2025
Since we all know there's no way in hell the owners of Major League Baseball would ever make Jane Leavy their commissioner - they'll never go down the Bart Giamatti/Fay Vincent road again - this book is best experienced as a lament for what baseball has become.
There are going to be a lot of books of this ilk coming out in the years to come, and Leavy offers up some of the usual suspects: analytics, know it alls in the front office, greedy owners, failing to attract young fans or African American players.
I suppose you could say she offers up some solutions - most of which involve making the experience more fan friendly - but these come across as the kinds of things you'd discuss with folks at a ballgame, rather than serious stuff that owners would consider. And ideas that take money out of owners' pockets... forget it.
But any book by one of the greatest writers of the sport demands your attention, and it helps that Leavy is quite a bit saltier in this accounting than you might expect from her other work. I, for one, applaud it.
There are going to be a lot of books of this ilk coming out in the years to come, and Leavy offers up some of the usual suspects: analytics, know it alls in the front office, greedy owners, failing to attract young fans or African American players.
I suppose you could say she offers up some solutions - most of which involve making the experience more fan friendly - but these come across as the kinds of things you'd discuss with folks at a ballgame, rather than serious stuff that owners would consider. And ideas that take money out of owners' pockets... forget it.
But any book by one of the greatest writers of the sport demands your attention, and it helps that Leavy is quite a bit saltier in this accounting than you might expect from her other work. I, for one, applaud it.
September 9, 2025
If MLB ever wanted a commissioner that actually likes baseball, let alone truly loves the game it wouldn’t need to look further than Jane Leavy. Her new book proves exactly what the title suggests - make her commissioner. “Make Me Commissioner” is a witty and inspired look at baseball at every level from the major leagues to Little League, the fantasy leagues and everything in between. Leavy hits her spots like a Hall of Fame pitcher, painting the corners and throwing strikes on every page. The book is so enjoyable as her passion for the game and camaraderie with baseball luminaries shines through.
November 6, 2025
3.5 stars for this newish to baseball fan. I loved all the stories of personal conversations, interviews and friendships with some of the great players of the game. It was the parts about baseball's move to all analytics, use of technology over talent and all that is not really baseball anymore that made my eyes glaze over. You can just feel that Jane Leavy is the ultimate lifelong fan of the game.
November 20, 2025
I call myself an atheist. If God exists, why would he choose to torment my Milwaukee Brewers? There are curses and hexes cast upon ball clubs. Superstitions liter fandoms thinking “if I wear my lucky socks, maybe Bruce Turang will get a hit.” If God is real, why must I be the catalyst for a players performance 500 miles away? Shouldn’t that be his job? Am I God? If I am, than this is my bible and Jane Leavy is a disciple.
Baseball is the most human game of all. It’s a game that relishes failure as much as celebrates success. In basketball, you can’t afford to miss a shot. In football, you can’t afford a couple of bad passes. But in baseball, a man can go 0-3 with three strikeouts but hit the walk off home run in the 9th, and become the hero for a night. They didn’t need to be the best, they just needed to be in one at bat when it mattered most. You can say that goes for any sport, but no sport dances in this light like baseball does. It relies on pathos and ethos more than it needs numbers. A child attending his first game wont remember a 1-4 batting line, but the hit that made a stadium of 40,000 rise in unison and create a noise that kid has never experienced before. It’s a game of pathos and ethos, and sometimes sets logos aside.
Baseball is at a crossroads, with logos starting to appear at the forefront of the modern game. Leavy details in her book that it is an archaic sport, lost in time, divided between the nostalgia of the game people grew up with and the path that it’s heading into this world of advanced numbers and analytics. She asks “is the game losing its feel?” And “how do we ensure it doesn’t.” It’s a riveting dissection of baseball from the eyes of someone who genuinely cares about the Great American Game. Baseball isn’t broken or dying. Analytics aren’t ruining the game and old school fans aren’t burdens on the sport. It needs to understand how to use analytics in a way that keeps its feel and right now, it doesn’t know how. Baseball has an identity crisis, and Leavy details and tries to resolve this crisis in this book.
I wish I was God because after 365 pages, I would make Jane Leavy the next commissioner of baseball.
Baseball is the most human game of all. It’s a game that relishes failure as much as celebrates success. In basketball, you can’t afford to miss a shot. In football, you can’t afford a couple of bad passes. But in baseball, a man can go 0-3 with three strikeouts but hit the walk off home run in the 9th, and become the hero for a night. They didn’t need to be the best, they just needed to be in one at bat when it mattered most. You can say that goes for any sport, but no sport dances in this light like baseball does. It relies on pathos and ethos more than it needs numbers. A child attending his first game wont remember a 1-4 batting line, but the hit that made a stadium of 40,000 rise in unison and create a noise that kid has never experienced before. It’s a game of pathos and ethos, and sometimes sets logos aside.
Baseball is at a crossroads, with logos starting to appear at the forefront of the modern game. Leavy details in her book that it is an archaic sport, lost in time, divided between the nostalgia of the game people grew up with and the path that it’s heading into this world of advanced numbers and analytics. She asks “is the game losing its feel?” And “how do we ensure it doesn’t.” It’s a riveting dissection of baseball from the eyes of someone who genuinely cares about the Great American Game. Baseball isn’t broken or dying. Analytics aren’t ruining the game and old school fans aren’t burdens on the sport. It needs to understand how to use analytics in a way that keeps its feel and right now, it doesn’t know how. Baseball has an identity crisis, and Leavy details and tries to resolve this crisis in this book.
I wish I was God because after 365 pages, I would make Jane Leavy the next commissioner of baseball.
January 4, 2026
I’m a sports fan and a moderate baseball fan. I can’t put my finger on why, but this book was a very hard slog to get through. The writing was ok, and the stories I would usually find of interest, but at a third of the way through I just wanted it to be over.
My biggest specific complaint is, despite the title, Leavy’s ideas if she was commissioner are nowhere summarized and clearly presented. They are mostly scattered through the book and presented as “maybes” or applying someone else’s ideas. I think that was a big alert of my impatience with the book - I was waiting for a grand finale of a “Day One manifesto” and got a rushed damp squib.
To be fair, Leavy highlights many of the faults of today’s game (at least what 60-something me and my equally elderly baseball friends think are faults), what precipitated them, and what are some possible solutions. But like a baseball game, these insights came as brief spurts in the middle of long runs of less interesting anecdotes. Maybe Leavy or her editor should have instituted the equivalent of a pitch clock to keep the narrative moving along.
Recommended only for avid baseball fans.
My biggest specific complaint is, despite the title, Leavy’s ideas if she was commissioner are nowhere summarized and clearly presented. They are mostly scattered through the book and presented as “maybes” or applying someone else’s ideas. I think that was a big alert of my impatience with the book - I was waiting for a grand finale of a “Day One manifesto” and got a rushed damp squib.
To be fair, Leavy highlights many of the faults of today’s game (at least what 60-something me and my equally elderly baseball friends think are faults), what precipitated them, and what are some possible solutions. But like a baseball game, these insights came as brief spurts in the middle of long runs of less interesting anecdotes. Maybe Leavy or her editor should have instituted the equivalent of a pitch clock to keep the narrative moving along.
Recommended only for avid baseball fans.
November 10, 2025
Some great baseball stories. And a thorough and compelling examination of so many of the problems in the game. Make her commissioner!
November 20, 2025
Another baseball masterpiece by Jane Leavy. Especially the audiobook read by the author. I could listen to her talk baseball all day everyday.
October 26, 2025
Leavy’s latest demonstrates the masterful execution of a perfectly turned 6-4-3 double play. I’m impressed both as a lifelong baseball fan and a career journalist. As to the former, she argues unflaggingly for the beauty of the game itself as well as for us fans, looking beyond ever-skyrocketing superstar contracts and ballpark admission prices, owner paydays and the dominance of inhuman analytics that have come to dominate the conversation. As to the latter, as a career journalist, I marvel at the depth of her reporting and mind-blowing fact-finding as well as her skill at keepingnthis compelling narrative ever moving forward. She’s often laugh-out-loud funny, makes no bones about her own lifelong obsession with the game and draws tremendous insights from a stellar cadre of interview subjects. Finally, as for the book's provocative title, she’s unquestionably got my vote.
October 23, 2025
This book will probably only be appreciated by true baseball fans! It is easy to read and is written in a style that seems like Ms Leavy is having a conversation with you. I like that she includes information from early baseball mostly from the last 50 years. I also like that she includes a fair amount of commentary on baseball from the last few years right up to the early part of 2025. I have a better understanding of how recent rules in the game came about. I also have a better appreciation of some of the baseball greats from the past twenty years. I learned so much more about the Savannah Bananas that I am sorry I missed my chance to see them at Nats Park this year. Hopefully I will get another chance.
October 10, 2025
Jane Leavy writes entertaining baseball. Her knowledge of the game, both new and old, takes any reader to a suspended, humorous time warp that is so refreshing. She knows the game, the players, the good, bad, and ugly that makes her writing a pure joy.
"Space Man" Lee, Dusty, "Cakes" Palmer, Ron Washington, Buck Showalter, "Boychek" Bregman, Rich "Middlefinger" Hill and so many others from OK to Cape Cod fills her work with one passionate feeling, "Yep! She must be way ahead of the pack to become MLB Commissioner!
"Space Man" Lee, Dusty, "Cakes" Palmer, Ron Washington, Buck Showalter, "Boychek" Bregman, Rich "Middlefinger" Hill and so many others from OK to Cape Cod fills her work with one passionate feeling, "Yep! She must be way ahead of the pack to become MLB Commissioner!
October 9, 2025
I love Jane’s writing style, she makes me feel like I’m along for the ride in this all-over-the-place dissection of professional baseball and what can be done to save it from itself. If you like baseball and good writing, you will find this book very hard to put down.
September 23, 2025
My mother would had called the author a tough old broad, and meant it as a compliment. My father would have called her spunky, also a compliment.
I would say she is an elegant writer with a white hot burning love for baseball, and also funny as hell.
To love baseball is to uncomfortably embrace contradictions. The author bemoans the damage done to pitcher’s arm through overthrowing and is enraged when you pull a pitcher with a no hitter in the 7th inning to protect the arm. To love baseball is to somehow have both make sense.
She sees the damage and worth analytics have brought to baseball, and her proposals to move forward have some merit. To be fair, if you invited three true baseball fans to dinner to discuss her plans when she becomes commissioner, it would be a five hour dinner and the most fun meal of the year.
If you love baseball, it’s the book of the year. If you’re a casual fan and love good writing, you are in for a treat.
As a life long Cubs fan, I was outraged when they brought night games to Wrigley Field. Guess what? I love night games at Wrigley Field. The love of tradition and the need to move forward is the tension that baseball embodies and this author gets it.
It’s such a great book.
I would say she is an elegant writer with a white hot burning love for baseball, and also funny as hell.
To love baseball is to uncomfortably embrace contradictions. The author bemoans the damage done to pitcher’s arm through overthrowing and is enraged when you pull a pitcher with a no hitter in the 7th inning to protect the arm. To love baseball is to somehow have both make sense.
She sees the damage and worth analytics have brought to baseball, and her proposals to move forward have some merit. To be fair, if you invited three true baseball fans to dinner to discuss her plans when she becomes commissioner, it would be a five hour dinner and the most fun meal of the year.
If you love baseball, it’s the book of the year. If you’re a casual fan and love good writing, you are in for a treat.
As a life long Cubs fan, I was outraged when they brought night games to Wrigley Field. Guess what? I love night games at Wrigley Field. The love of tradition and the need to move forward is the tension that baseball embodies and this author gets it.
It’s such a great book.
September 28, 2025
It’s rare to find a book as timely and up to date as this one. It’s no secret Major League Baseball has been been falling in popularity. But where have the solutions been? Jane goes into great detail to lay out the root cause and offer solutions. Baseball is at an inflection point and it’s time to plot a new course. If MLB is listening, take these ideas in and consider Jane as commish. Must read for any baseball fan
September 17, 2025
I've loved baseball for 70 years. The words uttered by James Earl Jones, as Terrence Mann, in Field of Dreams have always been entirely believable to me. But... runaway contracts for players who flit from team to team like butterflies pollinating the garden, absurd rule changes in the past few years, statistics-driven gambling (with or without partnerships with major league clubs), well - - I long for the days of complete-game-pitching and oled-timey fun at the ballpark. This wonderful, funny, frank book by Jane Leavy is filled with sage advice from players and managers of yore. Chock full of both statistics and good ideas, humor and athletic surgical details, remembrances of the Baseball that young people once loved to play AND watch, this
September 27, 2025
Fascinating read. You got my vote, Jane!
October 22, 2025
Extremely disappointing and infuriating
What I expected: a book about how to make baseball better and more entertaining.
What I got: barely a third of the way through the book. The first hundred pages are whining about HOW THE GAME WAS BETTER BEFORE THESE ANALYTICS NERDS GOT TO IT. The second hundred pages started with whining about how the Savannah Bananas are ruining baseball. I didn't get to the third hundred. Presumably, Leavy gets Abe Simpson to yell at a cloud.
Extremely disappointing. Absolute waste of 15 dollars.
What I expected: a book about how to make baseball better and more entertaining.
What I got: barely a third of the way through the book. The first hundred pages are whining about HOW THE GAME WAS BETTER BEFORE THESE ANALYTICS NERDS GOT TO IT. The second hundred pages started with whining about how the Savannah Bananas are ruining baseball. I didn't get to the third hundred. Presumably, Leavy gets Abe Simpson to yell at a cloud.
Extremely disappointing. Absolute waste of 15 dollars.
September 21, 2025
Back around the turn of the century --- especially in the wake of the 1994 strike that resulted in the cancellation of the remainder of the season --- several former baseball players and pundits published books on the problems with the game. Among them were a dwindling fan base due in part to competition from other diversions and starting times for games that were too late for the younger crowd, as well as feelings that the games were just too long.
As a result of the pandemic, Major League Baseball instituted new rules, including a pitch clock, to speed things up. This destroyed one of the cherished notions about the national pastime: without the clock in all other major sports, baseball theoretically could go on forever.
Even with these rules in place, baseball still has issues. Jane Leavy, who has written seminal biographies of three of the sport’s legends --- Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax --- brings her considerable knowledge and opinions in offering her take in MAKE ME COMMISSIONER.
So what is wrong with the game?
How much time do you have?
For one thing, Leavy believes there’s too much energy spent on numbers: “Playing for numbers has changed the way the game is taught.” Sure, statistics are a major part of the joys of baseball, but the newfound significance of such things as revolutions per minute for pitchers and bat velocity and launch angle for batters is taking over on every level, from Little League to the pro ranks. Teams and players are becoming slaves to the machine, as they look for any little advantage they can find. Trying to combat these new analytics is reminiscent of the scene from the film Moneyball where a group of grizzled scouts who have been working a certain way for decades are suddenly faced with a new way of doing things. But “[p]eople don’t come to see velo,” Leavy writes, “They come to see a story.”
And how the story has changed. When you consider a player for the Hall of Fame, you can’t use the same standards as just a decade or so ago. Starting pitchers throw fewer innings than ever before with a consequent reduction in wins. Where it used to be that you once needed at least 250 wins to be considered Hall material, that bar is now too high. Conversely, 500 home runs used to be a standard for hitters; now it almost seems low.
Leavy writes, “The problem is not having the information. It’s deciding what’s important,” and “Sometimes, it seems the players exist just to generate more data.” She also chastises MLB in the form of Commissioner Rob Manfred for gutting the minor leagues when he decided to cut more than 40 teams. Wouldn’t you think that’s counterproductive when you’re trying to increase interest?
Leavy traveled the country, meeting with former players and executives, and getting their opinions. Some of her ideas are worthy of further consideration, such as starting games earlier; free admission for younger kids, as well as reduced rates for families; making players more accessible by naming a “designated autograph signer” for each game; and monitoring youth baseball to prevent injuries. Others, with all due respect, seem silly, like having just two outfielders and doing away with over-the-fence home runs (granted, these aren’t all the author’s ideas; some come from people she’s interviewed along the way).
Leavy is of my generation, and I give her props for having an open mind. I totally agree with her sentiment that “Too much technology takes away from the beauty of the game.” I guess I fall into the demographic that likes the game as it’s always been, to be able to enjoy an afternoon in the sun without looking at the clock. But I don’t seem to count any more. For me, as she puts it, “Baseball lives at the intersection of history, memory, and nostalgia.” Nowadays, though, it seems the intersection has moved to somewhere between going to the mall, with its myriad food options and shops, and the Banana Ball phenomenon with its dances and bizarre rules, which some find entertaining. It may be entertaining, but to me that’s not baseball.
Reviewed by Ron Kaplan
As a result of the pandemic, Major League Baseball instituted new rules, including a pitch clock, to speed things up. This destroyed one of the cherished notions about the national pastime: without the clock in all other major sports, baseball theoretically could go on forever.
Even with these rules in place, baseball still has issues. Jane Leavy, who has written seminal biographies of three of the sport’s legends --- Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax --- brings her considerable knowledge and opinions in offering her take in MAKE ME COMMISSIONER.
So what is wrong with the game?
How much time do you have?
For one thing, Leavy believes there’s too much energy spent on numbers: “Playing for numbers has changed the way the game is taught.” Sure, statistics are a major part of the joys of baseball, but the newfound significance of such things as revolutions per minute for pitchers and bat velocity and launch angle for batters is taking over on every level, from Little League to the pro ranks. Teams and players are becoming slaves to the machine, as they look for any little advantage they can find. Trying to combat these new analytics is reminiscent of the scene from the film Moneyball where a group of grizzled scouts who have been working a certain way for decades are suddenly faced with a new way of doing things. But “[p]eople don’t come to see velo,” Leavy writes, “They come to see a story.”
And how the story has changed. When you consider a player for the Hall of Fame, you can’t use the same standards as just a decade or so ago. Starting pitchers throw fewer innings than ever before with a consequent reduction in wins. Where it used to be that you once needed at least 250 wins to be considered Hall material, that bar is now too high. Conversely, 500 home runs used to be a standard for hitters; now it almost seems low.
Leavy writes, “The problem is not having the information. It’s deciding what’s important,” and “Sometimes, it seems the players exist just to generate more data.” She also chastises MLB in the form of Commissioner Rob Manfred for gutting the minor leagues when he decided to cut more than 40 teams. Wouldn’t you think that’s counterproductive when you’re trying to increase interest?
Leavy traveled the country, meeting with former players and executives, and getting their opinions. Some of her ideas are worthy of further consideration, such as starting games earlier; free admission for younger kids, as well as reduced rates for families; making players more accessible by naming a “designated autograph signer” for each game; and monitoring youth baseball to prevent injuries. Others, with all due respect, seem silly, like having just two outfielders and doing away with over-the-fence home runs (granted, these aren’t all the author’s ideas; some come from people she’s interviewed along the way).
Leavy is of my generation, and I give her props for having an open mind. I totally agree with her sentiment that “Too much technology takes away from the beauty of the game.” I guess I fall into the demographic that likes the game as it’s always been, to be able to enjoy an afternoon in the sun without looking at the clock. But I don’t seem to count any more. For me, as she puts it, “Baseball lives at the intersection of history, memory, and nostalgia.” Nowadays, though, it seems the intersection has moved to somewhere between going to the mall, with its myriad food options and shops, and the Banana Ball phenomenon with its dances and bizarre rules, which some find entertaining. It may be entertaining, but to me that’s not baseball.
Reviewed by Ron Kaplan
December 9, 2025
Gack! Having read Leavy's Mantle and Koufax bios, I expected something far better than this dreck.
1.5 stars rounded down.
First, too much Upper East Side Yiddish self-referential schtick. Part of a whole string of self-referential material inserted in the book, including the photo of her bat dog on the back cover.
Second, calling 2016 Chapman a “young fireballer” at age 28 and 7th year in MLB?
Third, per a one-star reviewer, at least by itself, the Cape Cod League did not produce 1,700 big leaguers.
Fourth, yes, Kent, Washington was originally Titusville, but was incorporated AS KENT in 1890. And, this tidbit is totally irrelevant to her story.
At this point, I’m starting to think Jill Lepore on the 1-starred “These Truths.”
Then, looking at reviews, a 3-starrer called this “the ultimate notebook dump.” Bingo. Or a two-starrer noting a good title would be: “Veteran Sportswriter Yells at Cloud, or Late-Career Journalist Anecdote-A-Thon.” Maybe even more bingo.
Then, back to the book. Not sure what “Crawford” she had been talking about, I went to the index.
Oops, there is none, and my followers know that means an automatic ding.
Next, we’re in irony land. She gushes about Spencer Strider, has Dodgers manager Dave Roberts gushing about how he’s a lab rat for the newfangled baseball academies, etc.,on page 78. Strider got Tommy Johned in 2024, well, actually “caged.” She does note that 7 pages later. Why not at 78? Afraid of undercutting Roberts?
Also at this point, I realize that I haven’t yet had a big solution and that smaller solutions are nibbling around the edges, or else impractical or unrealistic. Any pitch over 95 a ball for example? Might cause more arm stress on pitchers before they adjust. Also depends on accuracy of guns in different stadiums.
The idea that the Savannah Bananas have something to teach MLB? Laughable. I mean, Banana Ball is entertainment. It’s not baseball as we know it, starting with that it’s literally not timeless. (Worse, she then flip-flops and rejects their Golden Bat idea.)
Shortening commercials between half-innings? Agreed.
Gets ghost runner rule wrong by talking about 1975 WS when it doesn’t apply to postseason.
Moving right along? By page 225, I’ve yet to see the word “steroids.” I’m not saying that’s anywhere near all of baseball’s problems but roiding did contribute to “three true outcomes.” I’ve also yet to see the word “blackout.” Yes, TV disparity is talked about, but I didn’t see the phrase “regional sports network” either.
I grok more. It gets worse.
Near page 300, she blames Bartman for the Cubs losing the 2003 NLCS. Mark Prior admitted “I choked.” So did the Cubs defense. Above all, did Dusty Baker, darling of Leavy’s throughout the book.
Last chapter offers mini-solutions, most untenable, like the 95mph max pitch speed. Some solutions offered by others, like a ball with more natural tack or higher seams? That will only encourage yet more spin, then more Tjs.
Other than this book being the blather even worse than the 3- and 2-star reviewers above indicate, Leavy getting the ghost runner rule and Bartman wrong show that she’s overrated, and self-overrated, in actually knowing baseball.
She does have one thing in this book. The tip of a Dusty Baker bio, but per blowing it on Bartman, she'd probably make that a puff piece book.
And, the subtitle is mendacious.
1.5 stars rounded down.
First, too much Upper East Side Yiddish self-referential schtick. Part of a whole string of self-referential material inserted in the book, including the photo of her bat dog on the back cover.
Second, calling 2016 Chapman a “young fireballer” at age 28 and 7th year in MLB?
Third, per a one-star reviewer, at least by itself, the Cape Cod League did not produce 1,700 big leaguers.
Fourth, yes, Kent, Washington was originally Titusville, but was incorporated AS KENT in 1890. And, this tidbit is totally irrelevant to her story.
At this point, I’m starting to think Jill Lepore on the 1-starred “These Truths.”
Then, looking at reviews, a 3-starrer called this “the ultimate notebook dump.” Bingo. Or a two-starrer noting a good title would be: “Veteran Sportswriter Yells at Cloud, or Late-Career Journalist Anecdote-A-Thon.” Maybe even more bingo.
Then, back to the book. Not sure what “Crawford” she had been talking about, I went to the index.
Oops, there is none, and my followers know that means an automatic ding.
Next, we’re in irony land. She gushes about Spencer Strider, has Dodgers manager Dave Roberts gushing about how he’s a lab rat for the newfangled baseball academies, etc.,on page 78. Strider got Tommy Johned in 2024, well, actually “caged.” She does note that 7 pages later. Why not at 78? Afraid of undercutting Roberts?
Also at this point, I realize that I haven’t yet had a big solution and that smaller solutions are nibbling around the edges, or else impractical or unrealistic. Any pitch over 95 a ball for example? Might cause more arm stress on pitchers before they adjust. Also depends on accuracy of guns in different stadiums.
The idea that the Savannah Bananas have something to teach MLB? Laughable. I mean, Banana Ball is entertainment. It’s not baseball as we know it, starting with that it’s literally not timeless. (Worse, she then flip-flops and rejects their Golden Bat idea.)
Shortening commercials between half-innings? Agreed.
Gets ghost runner rule wrong by talking about 1975 WS when it doesn’t apply to postseason.
Moving right along? By page 225, I’ve yet to see the word “steroids.” I’m not saying that’s anywhere near all of baseball’s problems but roiding did contribute to “three true outcomes.” I’ve also yet to see the word “blackout.” Yes, TV disparity is talked about, but I didn’t see the phrase “regional sports network” either.
I grok more. It gets worse.
Near page 300, she blames Bartman for the Cubs losing the 2003 NLCS. Mark Prior admitted “I choked.” So did the Cubs defense. Above all, did Dusty Baker, darling of Leavy’s throughout the book.
Last chapter offers mini-solutions, most untenable, like the 95mph max pitch speed. Some solutions offered by others, like a ball with more natural tack or higher seams? That will only encourage yet more spin, then more Tjs.
Other than this book being the blather even worse than the 3- and 2-star reviewers above indicate, Leavy getting the ghost runner rule and Bartman wrong show that she’s overrated, and self-overrated, in actually knowing baseball.
She does have one thing in this book. The tip of a Dusty Baker bio, but per blowing it on Bartman, she'd probably make that a puff piece book.
And, the subtitle is mendacious.
October 25, 2025
Not too long ago, I had forwarded my daughter a sort of low-brow article that tried valiantly to explain a very esoteric bit of music theory, which I barely understood but thought that she would appreciate. So we're discussing the article, and I sort of poo-poohed the supposed innovation, saying that there's no reason behind it, that it was "just vibes." I got yelled at. "MUSIC IS ABOUT VIBES," she said, and well, okay.
This is very much a book about vibes, part travelogue, part conversations with interesting and cool people from baseball's past and present. It performed the small miracle of getting me to be sympathetic with Alex Bregman for one tenth of one second. (The absolute highlight of my whole entire baseball year was booing Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve at Camden Yards, if you want to know where my loyalties lie.) It is a fun, light read that in no way--in no way-- convinces me that Jane Leavy should be commissioner.
Because this is a book that is very much about vibes. And I have nothing bad to say about vibes, but vibes don't pay the bills. ("Nothing pays bills like money," as the great Otis Strickland said, don't bother looking him up, no one ever heard of him, but he's right.)
Just one example. Leavy and I are both unhappy because MLB entered into a contract with something or other called Strauss (it's apparently Carhartt plus sauerkraut) to put their ads on batting helmets. Poor form! (I thought it was much worse when baseball put the logo for Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX crypto-dodge on the umpire's uniforms, but it's vibes either way.) Is Leavy right about this. Yes. Does it matter? No, because this is free money for MLB, and asking MLB to give up free money is like telling my daughter, "hey, you have other Taylor Swift records to listen to, maybe you don't need the new one." It's a waste of breath. Try telling Rob Manfred (who has much, much, much less cause to be commissioner than Jane Leavy, or her dog, or me, or either of my cats), hey, you need to turn down free money from some mysterious German manufacturing company because of vibes or aesthetics or baseball traditionalism and he will look at you funny. Then he will call security.
Are there good ideas here? Yes. I love the idea of expanding baseball rosters while also creating a five-man taxi squad of inactive pitchers who pitched yesterday; I think that solves a lot of problems with regard to load management. I think baseball travel teams are a blot upon the Republic that can be extirpated without a tear. I think MLB ought to triple its budget for the RBI program and put actual black folks in charge of it.
And Leavy has her finger on the single biggest problem: I want to know, God-damn it, what channel my Texas Rangers are going to be on, and that could be on any of fifteen different platforms. This is where baseball fans should stand stalwart across the history, crying "STOP." There could be a hundred chapters about that and I would read it. But it is going to take a tough-minded commissioner, with a steely eye for the bottom line, to extort the most out of the broadcast networks, and to tell the pipsqueaks (looking at you, Apple TV) to keep their dirty money.
Leavy for Commissioner? No. Leavy for Vice-President of Vibes? Yes.
This is very much a book about vibes, part travelogue, part conversations with interesting and cool people from baseball's past and present. It performed the small miracle of getting me to be sympathetic with Alex Bregman for one tenth of one second. (The absolute highlight of my whole entire baseball year was booing Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve at Camden Yards, if you want to know where my loyalties lie.) It is a fun, light read that in no way--in no way-- convinces me that Jane Leavy should be commissioner.
Because this is a book that is very much about vibes. And I have nothing bad to say about vibes, but vibes don't pay the bills. ("Nothing pays bills like money," as the great Otis Strickland said, don't bother looking him up, no one ever heard of him, but he's right.)
Just one example. Leavy and I are both unhappy because MLB entered into a contract with something or other called Strauss (it's apparently Carhartt plus sauerkraut) to put their ads on batting helmets. Poor form! (I thought it was much worse when baseball put the logo for Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX crypto-dodge on the umpire's uniforms, but it's vibes either way.) Is Leavy right about this. Yes. Does it matter? No, because this is free money for MLB, and asking MLB to give up free money is like telling my daughter, "hey, you have other Taylor Swift records to listen to, maybe you don't need the new one." It's a waste of breath. Try telling Rob Manfred (who has much, much, much less cause to be commissioner than Jane Leavy, or her dog, or me, or either of my cats), hey, you need to turn down free money from some mysterious German manufacturing company because of vibes or aesthetics or baseball traditionalism and he will look at you funny. Then he will call security.
Are there good ideas here? Yes. I love the idea of expanding baseball rosters while also creating a five-man taxi squad of inactive pitchers who pitched yesterday; I think that solves a lot of problems with regard to load management. I think baseball travel teams are a blot upon the Republic that can be extirpated without a tear. I think MLB ought to triple its budget for the RBI program and put actual black folks in charge of it.
And Leavy has her finger on the single biggest problem: I want to know, God-damn it, what channel my Texas Rangers are going to be on, and that could be on any of fifteen different platforms. This is where baseball fans should stand stalwart across the history, crying "STOP." There could be a hundred chapters about that and I would read it. But it is going to take a tough-minded commissioner, with a steely eye for the bottom line, to extort the most out of the broadcast networks, and to tell the pipsqueaks (looking at you, Apple TV) to keep their dirty money.
Leavy for Commissioner? No. Leavy for Vice-President of Vibes? Yes.
January 10, 2026
Experts have been trying to fix baseball since time immemorial. Many such proposals were wildly off the mark. Whitey Herzog's 1999 book rattled off typical Republican conservative talking points of the era. Bob Costas' book a year or two later decided that the sport merely needed to return to where it was when Costas was 11 years old (I exaggerate on both accounts, but not by much).
Jane Leavy's latest book has a somewhat misleading title. This is a travelogue through the worlds of baseball in the year 2023 (with some updates at the end to bring us up to mid-2025), and not a manifesto. Jane is a wildly entertaining traveling companions. She goes everywhere and speaks to everyone - Major League games, minor league games, Cape Cod summer league tilts; executives, field managers, coaches, and MLB players past, present, and future. Jane sprinkles in liberal doses of her Jewish heritage (the chapter on Alex Bregman is titled "Boychik"), and her prose, beyond many Yiddish words and even more profanities, at times mirrors the great Roger Angell ("Two hours before the first pitch, the hillside behind the home dugout had filled in like a newly planted garden after a week of spring rain", which, if not a direct quote, is a word-perfect homage). A trip to Driveline's analytics factory/gymnasium is balanced out by visits with fantasy baseball pioneer Daniel Okrent, and Baseball Prospectus co-founder Gary Huckabay (as one of the less-informed users of rec.sports.baseball in the early '90s, I had a few verbal tilts with Gary, a fact which I'd be gratified if he's completely forgotten).
Jane also explores in depth the headwinds that baseball faces in terms of the monetization of youth participation, the vanishing of the game in Black communities (best detailed in a chapter spent with Marquis Grissom), and the proliferation of analytics which have made baseball so dull and action-free over the past ten years. I do hope of course that a paperback edition to the book contains Jane's thoughts on the 2025 World Series, an instant classic with one of the top five or so Game Sevens ever played.
The actual fixes proposed by the author are limited to the final chapter and for the most part appear to be Band-Aids on the sport's (and its owners') self-inflicted wounds. Because the book is a travelogue and the author encounters many different perspectives, there are contradictory thoughts expressed in different chapters (such as, baseball is better off abandoning old traditions, versus a lament for the glory days of complete-game no-hitters, and whether your childhood swing is the "correct" swing or merely a bad habit to be overcome by cutting-edge training techniques).
But, Jane's book is much more entertaining than previous screeds of its ilk, and yes, she'd be a much better baseball Commissioner than the incumbent Rob Manfred (of course, so would my cat, but Leavy is a much more likely option).
Jane Leavy's latest book has a somewhat misleading title. This is a travelogue through the worlds of baseball in the year 2023 (with some updates at the end to bring us up to mid-2025), and not a manifesto. Jane is a wildly entertaining traveling companions. She goes everywhere and speaks to everyone - Major League games, minor league games, Cape Cod summer league tilts; executives, field managers, coaches, and MLB players past, present, and future. Jane sprinkles in liberal doses of her Jewish heritage (the chapter on Alex Bregman is titled "Boychik"), and her prose, beyond many Yiddish words and even more profanities, at times mirrors the great Roger Angell ("Two hours before the first pitch, the hillside behind the home dugout had filled in like a newly planted garden after a week of spring rain", which, if not a direct quote, is a word-perfect homage). A trip to Driveline's analytics factory/gymnasium is balanced out by visits with fantasy baseball pioneer Daniel Okrent, and Baseball Prospectus co-founder Gary Huckabay (as one of the less-informed users of rec.sports.baseball in the early '90s, I had a few verbal tilts with Gary, a fact which I'd be gratified if he's completely forgotten).
Jane also explores in depth the headwinds that baseball faces in terms of the monetization of youth participation, the vanishing of the game in Black communities (best detailed in a chapter spent with Marquis Grissom), and the proliferation of analytics which have made baseball so dull and action-free over the past ten years. I do hope of course that a paperback edition to the book contains Jane's thoughts on the 2025 World Series, an instant classic with one of the top five or so Game Sevens ever played.
The actual fixes proposed by the author are limited to the final chapter and for the most part appear to be Band-Aids on the sport's (and its owners') self-inflicted wounds. Because the book is a travelogue and the author encounters many different perspectives, there are contradictory thoughts expressed in different chapters (such as, baseball is better off abandoning old traditions, versus a lament for the glory days of complete-game no-hitters, and whether your childhood swing is the "correct" swing or merely a bad habit to be overcome by cutting-edge training techniques).
But, Jane's book is much more entertaining than previous screeds of its ilk, and yes, she'd be a much better baseball Commissioner than the incumbent Rob Manfred (of course, so would my cat, but Leavy is a much more likely option).
August 9, 2025
“Baseball is too slow.” “Analytics are ruining the game.” “Kids don’t want to play the game.” “Television ratings for baseball are terrible.” These and other complaints about the current state of Major League Baseball have been spoken, printed, shouted and communicated in nearly every manner for several years now. Jane Leavy, an accomplished baseball writer and fan, decided to use her experience and interview many people to come up with ways to fix the game. She tells readers about this experience and her ideas in this very good book.
Something that makes the book very interesting is that Leavy talks with many people with various viewpoints on many different issues. Leaving out names because 1) there are so many in the book that it would make this review longer than an 18-inning marathon game and 2) it would not be right to put labels on people such as “traditionalist” or “stat geek” so this review will not do so. It is just worth noting that the conclusions Leavy makes come after weighing all opinions.
Just about every aspect of the current game is covered and either addressed or left alone by Leavy in her final suggestions (which will not be revealed in this review). I thought her best work was on the lack of Black players from the United States as her interviews were very interesting. I will note that there is a triggering sentence in that section that she at least acknowledges that was very unprofessional on a possible solution to this problem. But the overall topic is covered well.
As is the other example I will note her, her writing on the current state of traveling baseball and how it not only will exclude kids from playing the game but also limits the opportunities for players to advance to either college baseball or possibly being drafted by MLB teams. I also enjoyed her stories of the Cape Cod league that are interspersed in the book between writing about these issues. They tie in nicely with the topics being discussed. One excellent example is near the end when kids can interact with the actual play on the field using some of the advanced analytical statistics. If that sounds improbable, it did happen and the story is great.
Improbable is the most likely outcome for either Leavy to become the actual commissioner or for many of her ideas to become reality. But even if they don’t, this book is a very good look at the current state of the game and some possible ways of addressing them without altering the beauty of the game itself.
I wish to thank Grand Central Publishing for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
Something that makes the book very interesting is that Leavy talks with many people with various viewpoints on many different issues. Leaving out names because 1) there are so many in the book that it would make this review longer than an 18-inning marathon game and 2) it would not be right to put labels on people such as “traditionalist” or “stat geek” so this review will not do so. It is just worth noting that the conclusions Leavy makes come after weighing all opinions.
Just about every aspect of the current game is covered and either addressed or left alone by Leavy in her final suggestions (which will not be revealed in this review). I thought her best work was on the lack of Black players from the United States as her interviews were very interesting. I will note that there is a triggering sentence in that section that she at least acknowledges that was very unprofessional on a possible solution to this problem. But the overall topic is covered well.
As is the other example I will note her, her writing on the current state of traveling baseball and how it not only will exclude kids from playing the game but also limits the opportunities for players to advance to either college baseball or possibly being drafted by MLB teams. I also enjoyed her stories of the Cape Cod league that are interspersed in the book between writing about these issues. They tie in nicely with the topics being discussed. One excellent example is near the end when kids can interact with the actual play on the field using some of the advanced analytical statistics. If that sounds improbable, it did happen and the story is great.
Improbable is the most likely outcome for either Leavy to become the actual commissioner or for many of her ideas to become reality. But even if they don’t, this book is a very good look at the current state of the game and some possible ways of addressing them without altering the beauty of the game itself.
I wish to thank Grand Central Publishing for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.
https://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/20...
October 23, 2025
The all-time notebook dump. Leavy knows everybody--she saw the greats at Yankee Stadium, had drunk Mickey Mantle collapse in her lap, can call Daniel Okrent and Roy Eisenhardt and Bill Lee when she needs them--and fills this with all sorts of sometimes-funny bits of shtick and Jewish jokes. She can go anywhere and talk to anyone, and the result is...some people in baseball are into all of this new tech and analytics, and some people think something has been lost. But then also you win games by optimizing spin and swing angle. But also baseball is not as culturally central as it was, and its stewards never really grasped the need to modernize. (The unexplored comparison here is with the NFL, which I'm not sure I'd say was all that focused on its fans' experience, but it seems to be implied that baseball lost its cultural predominance because it was supplanted by more au courant pastimes...except that nothing that the NFL did to promote itself showed any greater connection to the kids.)
Bit by bit, the little sections are fine. There's a lot about feel, about intuition, and Michael Lewis's own worried sense (not to mention Okrent's, who seems to have gotten the worst of it on both ends, making no money from inventing Rotisserie Baseball but also being tagged with having inaugurated the commodification of baseball players) that he never meant to say that numbers were all. She has funny byplay in parts of this with her various interlocutors, and the repeated vignettes at the Cape Cod league, along with her sojourns with the Savannah Bananas, whom she kind of loves, are sweet and nostalgic and remind me of that time we spent like two weeks there when I was 12. The depth and texture of so many figures' (and the range is huge, from Alex Bregman to an usher who worked for the Pirates for 80 years to more, and older old-timers than you'd expect) relation to the game reminds me of just how much relaxed pleasure there can be for lifers, as opposed to the football lifer, whose defining trait seems to be the prolonged joylessness of arriving at 4am to grind tape and then leaving the facility at 10pm.
But on the whole, it's just all over the place. She talks to all these people and ruminates and remembers her own kid desires and that time in publishing-league softball that she ran into her boss at first base. But it never goes anywhere beyond wrestling with numbers vs spirit, over and over and over, and in the end I wanted more.
Bit by bit, the little sections are fine. There's a lot about feel, about intuition, and Michael Lewis's own worried sense (not to mention Okrent's, who seems to have gotten the worst of it on both ends, making no money from inventing Rotisserie Baseball but also being tagged with having inaugurated the commodification of baseball players) that he never meant to say that numbers were all. She has funny byplay in parts of this with her various interlocutors, and the repeated vignettes at the Cape Cod league, along with her sojourns with the Savannah Bananas, whom she kind of loves, are sweet and nostalgic and remind me of that time we spent like two weeks there when I was 12. The depth and texture of so many figures' (and the range is huge, from Alex Bregman to an usher who worked for the Pirates for 80 years to more, and older old-timers than you'd expect) relation to the game reminds me of just how much relaxed pleasure there can be for lifers, as opposed to the football lifer, whose defining trait seems to be the prolonged joylessness of arriving at 4am to grind tape and then leaving the facility at 10pm.
But on the whole, it's just all over the place. She talks to all these people and ruminates and remembers her own kid desires and that time in publishing-league softball that she ran into her boss at first base. But it never goes anywhere beyond wrestling with numbers vs spirit, over and over and over, and in the end I wanted more.
December 25, 2025
I was very excited about this book as I'd likewise been kicking around some ideas of how I'd make baseball better if I was in charge. And we had some overlapping ideas, like more day baseball. For the same reasons I really wanted to like this book, but I found it disappointing.
There are a number of entertaining anecdotes and in some places Leavy identifies some things that are wrong with baseball. And she does identify a number of problems in baseball and how they came about, and offers a number of suggestions on how to improve or fix the problem. However I had three main issues with the book.
1. The book is all over the place. One chapter we're discussing how three true outcomes have impacted major league baseball, the next we're talking about Savannah Bananas or the Cape Cod league. Then back to MLB.
2. Many if not most of her fixes are non-starters or wouldn't make the game better. Leavy seems intent on punishing managers who remove a pitcher who is throwing a no-hitter, with a suspension or loss of challenges. While I get the aesthetic, penalizing teams for trying to win and protecting pitcher health is counterproductive. This is "old woman yells at clouds" and she yells a lot in this book.
3. To often, Leavy is the main character in the book. To a degree, I guess I should expect this from a book with two first-person pronouns in the title. But there's a lot about how she experienced events not how the events occurred.
If you're looking for anecdotes on baseball, you might well enjoy this book. But if you're looking for solutions to "fix" baseball -- which is at an time high for revenue and salaries, as she notes -- you won't get nearly as much as you'd expect from the title.
There are a number of entertaining anecdotes and in some places Leavy identifies some things that are wrong with baseball. And she does identify a number of problems in baseball and how they came about, and offers a number of suggestions on how to improve or fix the problem. However I had three main issues with the book.
1. The book is all over the place. One chapter we're discussing how three true outcomes have impacted major league baseball, the next we're talking about Savannah Bananas or the Cape Cod league. Then back to MLB.
2. Many if not most of her fixes are non-starters or wouldn't make the game better. Leavy seems intent on punishing managers who remove a pitcher who is throwing a no-hitter, with a suspension or loss of challenges. While I get the aesthetic, penalizing teams for trying to win and protecting pitcher health is counterproductive. This is "old woman yells at clouds" and she yells a lot in this book.
3. To often, Leavy is the main character in the book. To a degree, I guess I should expect this from a book with two first-person pronouns in the title. But there's a lot about how she experienced events not how the events occurred.
If you're looking for anecdotes on baseball, you might well enjoy this book. But if you're looking for solutions to "fix" baseball -- which is at an time high for revenue and salaries, as she notes -- you won't get nearly as much as you'd expect from the title.
October 3, 2025
I really liked Ball Four and so was looking forward to this new book to better understand how we got here and the issues facing the game, and maybe have some fun and be entertained along the way.
The author seems very well connected in this world, logging conversations throughout the book with managers, coaches, players, owners, analytics and personal-improvement companies and more, at all levels, from school ball and single-A up to the majors.
The theme throughout all of those interactions is, "what's wrong with baseball?" and "what would help?" The author asks this of many deeply experienced individuals in the game. I knew of some of the folks spoken with, like Dusty Baker and Jim Palmer (as players), but most I did not, and struggled a bit to picture them without Googling for some background. Same for some of the locations, especially on the Cape. Some photos or illustrations would've really helped put the reader in the place. Though I suppose if you're a baseball nut, like the person that won "Beat the Bot" (read about it in the book) you'd know who everyone & every place was.
One wonders where it's all going after over a dozen chapters of these encounters and conversations, but it all gets tied up in the end. At least it's somewhat charming along the way.
There are a number of great ideas for the game put forth, especially to get kids engaged and to keep adults paying attention, in the spirit of what's best for the fans and for the game, which is awesome.
The author seems very well connected in this world, logging conversations throughout the book with managers, coaches, players, owners, analytics and personal-improvement companies and more, at all levels, from school ball and single-A up to the majors.
The theme throughout all of those interactions is, "what's wrong with baseball?" and "what would help?" The author asks this of many deeply experienced individuals in the game. I knew of some of the folks spoken with, like Dusty Baker and Jim Palmer (as players), but most I did not, and struggled a bit to picture them without Googling for some background. Same for some of the locations, especially on the Cape. Some photos or illustrations would've really helped put the reader in the place. Though I suppose if you're a baseball nut, like the person that won "Beat the Bot" (read about it in the book) you'd know who everyone & every place was.
One wonders where it's all going after over a dozen chapters of these encounters and conversations, but it all gets tied up in the end. At least it's somewhat charming along the way.
There are a number of great ideas for the game put forth, especially to get kids engaged and to keep adults paying attention, in the spirit of what's best for the fans and for the game, which is awesome.
October 27, 2025
Jane Leavy and I have a few things in common. We are big baseball fans, about the same age, with New York Jewish heritage and dogs we love. We differ on our preference of New York teams. She's for the Yankees. I am with the Mets. Each of us has nostalgia for the way the game used to played.
Leavy is more concerned about the state of the game than I am, though I understand what she is worried about. There were aspects of the way ML baseball was played before the "Moneyball" era we miss. Bunting, squeeze plays, and hit-and-run plays are some of them. The rate of strikeouts has gone up enormously as pitchers have been trained to throw harder with more spin, while batters focus more on hitting home runs.
There have been rule changes that restored some of the game's athleticism and made it move faster, including a pitch clock, banning shifts, reducing throws to first base, and enlarging the bases. The next big change will be the automated ball-strike system (ABS), which Leavy opposes and I favor. Consistent with her ABS opposition is a general discontent with an over-reliance on statistics to make decisions at the expense of observation and instinct. She feels that MLB has lost its connection to young fans because of excessive development of teenage talent, fewer minor league teams, and reduced contact between players and fans.
There is truth in many of Leavy's view and she explores ideas she believes will fix things. Some of the ideas are interesting. Some far fetched. Few are likely to come to pass. Her book is provocative for baseball fans who love to debate.
Leavy is more concerned about the state of the game than I am, though I understand what she is worried about. There were aspects of the way ML baseball was played before the "Moneyball" era we miss. Bunting, squeeze plays, and hit-and-run plays are some of them. The rate of strikeouts has gone up enormously as pitchers have been trained to throw harder with more spin, while batters focus more on hitting home runs.
There have been rule changes that restored some of the game's athleticism and made it move faster, including a pitch clock, banning shifts, reducing throws to first base, and enlarging the bases. The next big change will be the automated ball-strike system (ABS), which Leavy opposes and I favor. Consistent with her ABS opposition is a general discontent with an over-reliance on statistics to make decisions at the expense of observation and instinct. She feels that MLB has lost its connection to young fans because of excessive development of teenage talent, fewer minor league teams, and reduced contact between players and fans.
There is truth in many of Leavy's view and she explores ideas she believes will fix things. Some of the ideas are interesting. Some far fetched. Few are likely to come to pass. Her book is provocative for baseball fans who love to debate.
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