The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball's Power Brokers

by Jon Pessah

The incredible inside story of power, money, and baseball's last twenty years.

In the fall of 1992, America's National Pastime is in crisis and already on the path to the unthinkable: cancelling a World Series for the first time in history. The owners are at war with each other, their decades-long battle with the players has turned America against both sides, and the players' growing addiction to steroids will threaten the game's very foundation.

It is a tipping point for baseball, a crucial moment in the game's history that catalyzes a struggle for power by three strong-willed men: Commissioner Bud Selig, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and union leader Don Fehr. It's their uneasy alliance at the end of decades of struggle that pulls the game back from the brink and turns it into a money-making powerhouse that enriches them all.

This is the real story of baseball, played out against a tableau of stunning athletic feats, high-stakes public battles, and backroom political deals -- with a supporting cast that includes Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, Joe Torre and Derek Jeter, George Bush and George Mitchell, and many more.

Drawing from hundreds of extensive, exclusive interviews throughout baseball, The Game is a stunning achievement: a rigorously reported book and the must-read, fly-on-the-wall, definitive account of how an enormous struggle for power turns disaster into baseball's Golden Age.

Genres: Baseball, Sports, Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Business, American History

592 pages, Hardcover

First published May 5, 2015

Reviews

[Harold Kasselman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating and comprehensive look at the behind the scenes machinations of the major actors in the MLB from the calculated ouster of Vincent Faye up through the installation of Rob Manfred as the new commissioner. This is a must reference book for any baseball historian or fan of the game.
Mr. Pessah focuses on the major labor issues of those days including revenue sharing, a salary cap, building new stadiums, cable television revenue, lockouts, strikes, and PED usage. The story is largely centered around the major players of that era; namely Bud Selig, George Steinbrenner, and Don Fehr. The author appears to come down hardest on Selig who is depicted as a self-interested owner who cared more about his personal finances and his legacy as baseball commissioner than the integrity of the game(steroids/amphetamines) or his own ethics.(Owning the Brewers while still in the commissioner's chair). Steinbrenner is the power broker of the game who takes baseball and his team to revenue stardom as well as championships while reluctantly agreeing to the call from small market teams for revenue sharing and a luxury cap to foster competitive balance.
Don Fehr, it seems to me, largely gets a pass from the author for the strife in contracts and PED issues because he was just an agent of the players expressing their interests. Well, I'm not as tough on Selig nor as adoring of Fehr or Steinbrenner. But that's up to the reader to conclude. What is more important is the history of the crises in baseball during those years and the motivations and action of its actors in shaping the game to its biggest revenue for all involved in a relatively short period of time. The behind the scene machinations, especially of Selig and Jerry Reinsdorf are totally absorbing. The thinking of the actors are well depicted(some 150 people were interviewed)and makes for great reading. This is a long book but it is simply fascinating stuff and there is never a dull moment. Kudos to Mr. Pessah for his exhaustive efforts that are sure to place this book in the category of the best of the best.

[Steven Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I picked up a copy of THE GAME: INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL’S POWER BROKERS by Jon Pessah I expected an exploration of the world of baseball between 1992 and 2010 from financial and labor perspectives. What I read encompasses those general themes, but the book also evolved into a prolonged discussion of Bud Selig and George Steinbrenner’s roles in baseball during that time period, and bringing with it an excellent reporter’s knowledge of baseball and the personalities involved. I soon developed an intense distaste for Selig, who was the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and the “acting” commissioner of baseball at the same time, a direct conflict of interest; and a greater understanding of Steinbrenner, and a degree of empathy for his at times, outrageous behavior.

The year 1992 can be considered a “watershed” year in the history of major league baseball. The owners were at war with each other, the owners were also at war with the players through their labor union, and the steroid era was just emerging. Pessah raises the question; did Bud Selig save baseball, as the former Commissioner of Baseball would like everyone to believe. After reading Pessah’s account I agree with his conclusions that Selig did more to hurt the game he supposedly loved, and his actions were driven by his own selfish agenda and led to some of the most hypocritical actions and statements that I have ever been exposed to. Bud Selig has one belief, what is best for Bud Selig. When it came to his role as owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, that belief centered on improving the value of his franchise no matter who he hurt or used by reorienting baseball’s financial structure to meet his needs.

Unhappy with the settlement with the players union in 1990 because of what he perceived to be the actions of then Baseball Commissioner Faye Vincent, Selig worked assiduously to have him removed and have himself appointed as “acting” commissioner. Once this was achieved Selig would be in charge of negotiating a new contract with his adversary, Donald Fehr, the head of the players union. The Brewers team debt stood at $35 million in 1990 and throughout the period it would quadruple, if not more. For Selig, a new stadium was needed to replace the antiquated Milwaukee County Stadium to help pay down his debt. The problem was who would finance the cost of this project. As Pessah’s research will prove Selig would blackmail localities into having public funding for stadiums or they could lose their teams to franchise relocation or contraction (having the league fold their franchises). Selig was envious of large market teams with extensive resources because of cable television contracts and other marketing advantages, as a result he sought to pillage those teams through revenue sharing, a salary cap, and possibly, a luxury tax. His target was George Steinbrenner’s New York Yankees and a few other franchises. What was most disingenuous, is that when revenue sharing was eventually implemented, many of the small market teams took the millions of dollars they received, supposedly designated for player development and procurement to make their teams more competitive, and devoted the money to their own profits. In Selig’s case he paid down his debt, and at the same time reduced his payroll. In the case of billionaire owner, Carl Polhand of the Minnesota Twins, he just pocketed the money.

The first part of the book analyzes the steps that led to the cancelling of the last month of the 1994 baseball season and the World Series. In meticulous fashion Pessah describes the positions of the owners and the player’s union. What seems abundantly clear is no matter how many times Selig downplayed the idea that the owners wanted a strike, the evidence reflects the opposite. After Selig arranged his coup against Vincent, he also engineered a change in baseball’s voting structure to allow small market teams like the Brewers to veto any settlement with the players they did not like. Pessah places the onus of the strike and the possible use of replacement players on Selig and his supporters, and less so on the player’s union head, Donald Fehr. Along the way the author integrates the story of Don Mattingly, the Yankee first basement who had never been to the post season and whose body was slowly giving way to father time. When Selig ended the season, the Yankees were in first place and were on the road to a possible World Series appearance for the first time since 1981, and it seemed Mattingly’s last chance may have been passed by. Pessah explores Steinbrenner and other owner’s roles as well as Fehr and the union in intricate detail. What one concludes as a settlement is finally reached is that Selig is correct that financial changes needed to be implemented, but other issues facing baseball, like steroids were ignored because for Selig “the homeruns” that resulted from the use of steroids were good for baseball’s bottom line. As a result he and the owners turned a blind eye to the problem.

Selig’s methods are a major focus of the book. How he arranges for the Montreal Expos to be purchased by Major League Baseball for $120 million and its sale for over $400 million to a group that moves it to Washington, DC is priceless. Further, his manipulation of the Florida Marlins situation reflects his duplicitousness as he arranges for the former owner of the Expos, Jeffrey Loria to buy the Marlins when he cannot really affords to do so. Another example is how Selig arranges for John Henry to purchase the Boston Red Sox who he hopes will create a small market mentality more to his liking in Beantown. Selig did not overlook the needs of his own team, managed by his daughter Wendy while he was commissioner, a team that was $148.7 million in debt. Amazingly, by the 2007 baseball season that debt has been reduced to $30 million. Eventually Selig would sell the Brewers for $200 million based on revenue sharing and Miller Park, the stadium that was publicly financed by the residents of Milwaukee. In addition, by 2009 Selig earned a salary of $18 million a year, and by his retirement year he had a net worth of over $200 million, not including the $35-40 million he will collect from baseball as a Commissioner Emeritus, not bad for an owner of a small market team that at one time was hemorrhaging from debt.

Pessah’s narrative includes a discussion of events taking place outside of baseball, and Congress is a major candidate for his sarcasm. Different Congressional committees and their politicians will use labor issues and the steroid epidemic throughout the period under discussion, grandstanding about the national pastime and making threats to take away baseball’s anti-trust exemption. At the same time they avoid dealing with issues relating to Hurricane Katrina, the lack of proper body armor for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the crisis over Abu Ghraib, and numerous other issues. It seems reasonable to assume that the money that the owners are donating to Congressional campaigns bears fruit. The reader is provided transcripts of Congressional hearings, National Labor Relations Board decisions, intimate conversations among owners, as well as the inner workings of the union. These details are enlightening as we learn of Yankee General Manager, Brian Cashman’s distaste for the arrogance he sees in Joe Torre, George W. Bush’s hope to be Commissioner of Baseball, the inner workings of the Steinbrenner family, and many other interesting items. I assume that Pessah has worked his sources well and he is presenting an accurate account, however, a degree of footnoting might assuage my historian’s sensitivities, though I compliment him on his excellent bibliography and the names of those interviewed.

The narrative makes for an excellent read for baseball fans and the public in general who lived through the events and relationships described. Pessah spares nothing in discussing the BALCO scandal and Barry Bonds, the Mitchell Commission and Report that Selig created to help clear his own guilt about how he handled, or better, did not handle the growing steroid scandal in baseball. The “bash brothers,” Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro, and many others make their appearances as authors or witnesses before Congressional committees. Perhaps the most important aspect of the book reflects the human frailties of all involved as the reader is taken from one contract negotiation to the next, in addition to each scandal or blight on baseball’s reputation. Pessah’s account is almost encyclopedic as his subject matter evolves over two decades. It seems to me as an avid baseball fan he does not miss much and to his credit, his honesty in reporting is a highlight that readers should cherish. THE GAME is more than a baseball book, it is a story of greed, power, and manipulation that in many instances gives our nation’s pastime a black eye. But as most baseball fans realize once spring training arrives after a long winter, they are willing to forgive and forget the actions of the likes of Bud Selig.

[Tim Fischer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book except too much about the NY Yankees!

[Tobias · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first I thought this was a worthy sequel to John Helyar's classic The Lords of the Realm, about how the economics of baseball changed from the 1960s onward. The discussion of the conditions resulting in the 1994 strike certainly picked up where Helyar left off. However, as the book went on, it became clear that a) Pessah is better at simply recording events instead of analyzing and b) there's way too much about Steinbrenner and the Yankees at the expense of everything else. The summaries of gameplay are also, oddly for a book about baseball, distracting. I don't really need to know what happened on the field every season. For all the talk about the years of labor peace that followed the 1994 strike, Pessah doesn't actually make a strong argument for why this happened, just says that it did. Another omission is that he says almost nothing about the sabermetric revolution, which certainly helped narrow the gap between big market and small market franchises, a major factor in earlier labor disputes (I found only a single passing reference to Cashman's establishing an analysis shop in the mid-2000s - that's it). Also, for all the words devoted to the steroids issue, he never bothers to spell out what all the fuss was about, why it happened, etc. It's certainly connected to the economics of the game - bigger contracts mean bigger risks for falling behind - but he leaves this unsaid.

Informative, but disappointing.

[Dorothy Fischer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love baseball! I love being at a ball park with hot dog in hand, and although some would say I can not be a true fan because I do not like beer, watching amazingly athletic players warm up. I love the statistics, the scoring, the strategy of pitcher and cathcher, the signs, the squeeze plays, the walk offs...okay! I love baseball! I wanted to read this book and get a true representation of the years I have lived through. I have lived in both New york and Milwaukee, born a Yankees fan, but because of many moves and a child who grew up a Royals fan, am now a Royals fan...when the Yankees are statisically elimanted from the playoffs! I diverge, there were times reading this book I decided to hate baseball(or the people forming it).....just how could these egocentric people be a part of what is righteous, true and holy?
Oh well, I grew up to reality by the end! An amazing research job, a well written and excellent read. Anyone who even likes babseball a little should read this. I will leave my personal opinions to myself so others reading this can learn for themselves all about Selig( a used car salesman, he will remain in my mind always) and Fehr and Steinbrenner and all the other players over the years of baseball that had so many changes and moments of awesomeness mixed with moments of dispair.
Please read this and then pass it on!

[Pamela Montano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Between 1992 and 2010, baseball went through many changes. This book takes a look inside the men who created those changes, Bud Selig (Commissioner), Donald Fehr (head of the players union) and George Steinbrenner (owner of the NY Yankees). Bud Selig, one-time owner of the Milwaukee Brewers almost lost the job of Commissioner to George W. Bush. Luckily for baseball fans, that didn't happen. Donald Fehr, hero to the union and villian to the owners, clashes with Bud at every turn. Steinbrenner, once banned from baseball, returns with a venegance and clashes with everyone, including those who work for him and play on his team. A very interesting look inside the greatest game ever played.

[Jacob Bonesteel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Baseball has a history as rich as any sport in America. It is a story full of myths and legends, heroes and villains, triumphs and tragedies. Jon Pessah’s The Game: Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball’s Power Brokers attempts to shed light on a period of the game roughly coinciding with the career of MLB Commissioner Allan H. ‘Bud’ Selig. Selig became the commissioner of Major League Baseball in the summer of 1998 during a time when MLB was waning in national popularity. Gone were the days of the likes of Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson. The game had begun to stagnate in the eyes of the general population. This is the story of the effect of a single man on the sport of baseball through one of its most turbulent times.

The Game is not at all what I expected it to be. It covers the history of baseball from the late 1990s through the end of the 2000s, a span of roughly twenty years now known as the Steroid Era of Baseball. As I began reading this book, I thought I would be reading tales of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s home run race, of the scandal involving Barry Bonds and BALCO, maybe of the crazy shenanigans of Jose Canseco, or the fall from grace of Roger Clemens. While all those stories are covered in this book, The Game is largely about one man, Bud Selig. Selig was an owner at the time of his election to Commissioner of MLB and the perfect man to do battle with the Major League Baseball Players Association union. This book covers a large chunk of baseball history, but most of the stories within take place off the field, covering labor disputes and ownership tiffs as opposed to home runs and stolen bases.

One thing The Game does quite convincingly is showcase the major players off the field during this era, men like Selig, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and MLBPA Executive Director Don Fehr. Through Pessah’s accessible writing style, Fehr and Selig’s legendary labor disputes became akin to Sosa and McGwire’s home run race, and Steinbrenner’s colossal personality and the mark he left on the game seemed to rival that of the great Babe Ruth himself. The only criticism I have for The Game is the sheer number of stories about labor disputes all seemed to blur together in the middle third. Far more interesting to me was the chapter surrounding the events of 9/11. I was left bleary-eyed at parts, and I would have loved to hear more about the cultural impact of baseball in this vein as opposed to all the labor talks. I didn’t begin this book expecting to read so much about unions and ownerships, but I left the experience with an appreciation for the game behind the game. I would recommend this book to fans of Moneyball, or anyone who wants to gain a greater appreciation for the business side of baseball.

4/5 Stars

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re looking for a book that relives the great baseball moments of the past twenty years, this isn’t the book for you. The book isn’t about the playing of baseball, it’s about the machinations of the organized sport and the people who pull the strings behind it.

The book is all about three men - Bud Selig, Don Fehr and George Steinbrenner. All were essential figures during baseball’s growth in the 90s and 00s and saw the game through its biggest controversies (labor strikes and steroids). You have to be ready to ready a book much more about business and power dynamics than about the actual “game” of baseball.

The story is admittedly fascinating. This book will be very interesting to deep fans of baseball - you relive the moments that shaped these years through a completely different lens. I love Pessah’s present tense narrative style of writing that takes you back to those moments and makes you feel always “behind the scenes” in real time. I also appreciate that he is fair to these three characters - this is not a praise to the three figures, but an objective view of their accomplishments and shortcomings. He lets Selig’s actions, for example, speak for themselves.

I give the book 4 stars, not 5, because the book was too long (nearly 600 pages felt entirely unnecessary) and its narrow focus on the 3 aforementioned characters felt repetitive. There was so much else going on in baseball, and so many players’ achievements, that deserved some attention. I thought there were some missed opportunities to discuss in more detail the other things in American life (9/11 and other events) that he spent maybe a paragraph referring to.

I don’t think this book would be very enjoyable for anyone who wasn’t a pretty significantly invested fan over the late 90s and 00s. But if you were, you will largely love this book.

[Aaron Sinner · Rating 5 out of 5]

2015 CASEY Award nominee
Briefly: The definitive history of an era

Jon Pessah’s magnum opus serves as an enlightening examination as to how the game of baseball was shaped behind the scenes throughout Bud Selig’s commissionership, from the 1994-95 strike to the steroids era through 18 years of labor peace and geographic stability. The book tells its story through a tight lens focused on the three men who most reshaped the game: Selig, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and MLBPA executive director Don Fehr. The narrative wisely interweaves off-field happenings with anchor points in the on-field game, both grounding the back room events with their more historically visible counterparts and demonstrating the ways in which those back room machinations reshaped the game.

If one “character” is missing from the story, perhaps it is the larger societal forces pushing baseball’s revenues to previously unseen heights. While the telling is quick to spotlight Selig’s and others’ contradictions and hypocrisy, it doesn’t always offer an alternative paradigm for interpreting events. Did Selig’s initiatives help baseball’s revenues soar, or were there other clear forces driving that? Was George Steinbrenner’s spending excessive even for the Yankees, or did it accurately reflect their revenues and climbing franchise valuation?

Despite this minor concern, Pessah takes what could be dry labor deals and writes in such a way that they leap off the page, with compelling characters and a narrative that makes The Game a page-turner for all 592 pages.

[Daniel Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! This really digs into so much about Bug Selig, steroids, revenue sharing, George Steinbrenner and everything else going on from about 1992 through 2014. It's a must-read for all baseball fans. I never liked Bug Selig, but this book pointed out even more reasons to despise him. The steroids coverage in here was incredible and more eye opening than I had expected. Wow.

[DJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overall view of baseball from 1990 to 2010. A bit too much of Steinbrenner, even as a Yankee fan.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hated this book, it makes me so angry. But it was well-written and insightful. 😂

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

1992 – The Toronto Blue Jays win their first World Series and take the trophy to Canada for the first time in history while Bud Selig became “Acting Commissioner” for the MLB after conspiring to oust Faye Vincent as his conciliatory approach to the Players’ Union was unappealing to the owners (including Selig himself, owner of the Milwaukee Brewers). From then on, Selig led the MLB into the new millennium and through two of baseball’s most traumatic historical moments, at least in recent memory.

Jon Pessah chronicles Selig’s reign as commissioner alongside two other titanic figures in the modern history of the game: George Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees with a Napoleon complex to dominate the sport, and Donald Fehr, head of the MLBPA, whose clashes with Selig throughout Selig’s terms defined the relationship between owners and players. Pessah’s chronicles are extraordinarily detailed and draw on over 150 interviewees, detailing every aspect not just of the on-field situation but the politicking and double-dealing that took place behind closed doors. Pessah never comes across as combative or outrightly hostile to these men, but through just letting the actions speak for themselves, it’s clear that Selig, at least, does not come out innocent. Responsible for the 1994 strike and season cancellation, responsible for the dismembering of the Montreal Expos and the implementation of revenue sharing that while ostensibly should have benefited smaller-market teams, instead undoubtedly lined the pockets of those same teams’ owners, including Selig. The Big Stein is brash and utterly incorrigible, yet his actions can be understood in the face of league hostility; while Don Fehr despite his troubled handling of the PED scandal, comes across as a stalwart defender of the players’ rights, even when the whole of public opinion, congress, and baseball are against him.

Throughout all of this, Pessah guides the reader through a tumultuous period in baseball’s history, where twice it was almost on the brink of self-inflicted demise. His writing style is clear and its use of the present tense ensure the reader is firmly in the midst of the action, experiencing these last-minute deals and tense negotiations. His account is encyclopedic in scope as decades sweep by. He expertly analyses the reasons for the cancellation of the 1994 season (Montreal could have won it all!) and he spares no one in dealing with the fallout from BALCO scandal as steroids shattered records across the sport. Pessah is a fan of the game – he misses no detail – and despite the length, The Game never felt boring or repetitive (despite the repetitiveness of labour negotiations between the owners and players).

More than just a book about baseball, The Game is a detailed exposé of the politics and manoeuvrings that shaped the modern game as we know it. It shows the numerous scandals and fallouts that mar baseball’s image and yet, as spring training once again rolls around, fans still flock on Opening Day to stadiums across the country, forgiving and forgetting all that game before. History is mutable only in Cooperstown. This is very nature of the game.

[Seth · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Game" covers events occurring during the two-decade reign of Allan H. "Bud" Selig over Major League Baseball and might more appropriately be titled "Hating on Bud".

The book is an enjoyable read, well-written and researched. But by the end of the book the author's biases become obvious. Bud Selig was portrayed as a schemer, Don Fehr as a saint, and George Steinbrenner as a living legend.

I'm no Bud Selig apologist, but the author seemed focused on tarnishing Selig's legacy. Which is fine. . . tarnish away if that's what he deserves. But at least make it evenhanded. According to the book, Fehr's only sin seemed to be leaving too big of shoes to fill for his successor. Are we really supposed to believe Fehr did nothing shady during his 25 years at the helm?

I concur that there is a lot of Yankees talk: Brian Cashman, Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, etc. Even though I'm not a Yankees fan, I didn't mind it. They were the dominant club of the era, so it seemed to flow well with the overall narrative of the book.

The conclusion seemed to be that despite the strikes and the steroids, everyone came out of this era richer. Players' salaries exploded, Selig personally went from the outhouse to the penthouse, and the Yankees organization became stinking crazy filthy rich.

It's all good for now - I'll be interested to see what happens with MLB over the next 25-30 years as baby boomers pass away. Sure, baseball has become wealthy catering to the older generation, but have they done enough to cultivate American children of today as their fan base of the future? I don't think they have, but it remains to be seen. I think it's International or Bust.

I think I'd still recommend the book despite its shortcomings. A good recap for anyone who wants to understand or relive baseball in the 1990s and 2000s. But for anyone who leans to the right, be prepared for the pro-labor perspective and the occasional potshot at the Bush Administration.

[Mark Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pessah's book is the story of two conflicts. The first is between owners of small-market teams (epitomized by the perenially uncompetitive Brewers) and the owners of large-market teams (represented by the dominant Yankees). The second conflict pits the owners against the players union. Both conflicts are essentially financial in nature. Small-market owners want revenue-sharing, i.e., a share of the profits earned by more successful teams. They also want a cap on player salaries to be able to better compete for talent with teams in bigger cities. Players, of course, prefer a free market in which the likes of Steinbrenner can pay as much as they like to build a dominant team.

In 1992, George W. Bush is an owner of the Texas Rangers, legendary Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is at the height of his powers, and Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig is about to become the Commissioner of baseball. By 2010, Bush has served as the 43rd President of the United States, Steinbrenner has passed away, Selig has turned over the Commissioner's role to Rob Manfred, his hand-picked successor.

Proceeding chronologically, Pessah covers the debates between the owners, negotiations between the owners and the unions, the impact of the steroid scandal on the business of baseball, and the relationship between the game and politics. Both President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush make important appearances. Though the book is primarily about the business of the game, Pessah weaves in on-field highlights.

Baseball fans interested in business will enjoy the book. The book makes for easy reading, though, in places, it would benefit from a faster pace. Pessah makes abundantly clear that baseball's power brokers care more about their own interests much more than the abstract "good of the game," so fans clinging to romantic notions about owners and players may find themselves disappointed.

[Grindy Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bizarre ending - for 500+ pages the author weaves a great narrative of the Steroids Era by telling the tales of Bud Selig, George Steinbrenner, Donald Fehr, and the steroids users from the mid-1990s to the first decade of the 21st Century. The Selig narrative makes the case that Bud was in over his head when it came to running a baseball team, and even when his wish came true for a new stadium and the taxpayer-subsidized revenue that comes with it the Brewers couldn't win a damn thing. The case is also made that Bud was happy with the dough that came with juiced baseballs and did a 180 only when he realized how awful rocket fuel was for the game (though not taking into account the effect on players' health). Despite that, Pessah finishes the narrative with his belief that Selig should be in the Hall of Fame alongside Steinbrenner and Fehr. That's absurd - Selig's Hall of Fame claim should be taken as seriously as Joe Jackson or Pete Rose's claim. If you're going to keep the steroid users out of the Hall, you have to keep the mediocre car salesman who enabled them out of the Hall, too.

The Brewers and Yankees are juxtaposed in this because they represent the extremes of low-spending and high-spending teams. Selig and the other losers who couldn't figure out how to get to the post-season pretend that the reason that the Yankees (and Cubs and Dodgers and Red Sox) have on-field success is because they make/spend more money. I suspect that if Steinbrenner were forced to be an owner in a small market he would still find success on occasion, whereas if Selig were in charge of the Yankees he would run them into the ground.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of Major League Baseball over the last two decades can be boiled down to three stories: the crippling strike of 1994 whose effects are still being felt today, the wide payroll disparity that led to revenue sharing and the luxury tax, and steroids. The Game is a painstakingly researched and riveting portrait of the three men who played the biggest roles in making that history: MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, Players Union leader Donald Fehr, and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

Pessah's sympathies lie mainly with Fehr (though nobody comes out of the steroid scandal looking good), but the book's main takeaway is his portrayal of Selig as a marginally effective negotiator, skilled at massaging the owners' massive egos, but somehow always one step behind the times, and possessing a desperate need for approval. I also did not realize just how close George W. Bush came to being named the commissioner in the mid-90s, which would have precluded his run for Texas governor and changed modern history.

This book's lengthy running time (nearly 600 pages of text) may be a turnoff for anyone looking for a quick primer on recent baseball events, nor does it break any news, but it is never less than engaging and touches on just about every issue facing the game today. Highly recommended.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The structure of building the book around the relationship between Selig and Steinbrenner wasn't something I was sure about at the start, but it really showed the complicated nature of both men. Both succeeded in spite of themselves...

Selig being the ultimate backroom politician who is able to completely ignore all of his failures and shortcomings with a self-preserving myopia that allowed him to succeed.

Steinbrenner agreed to Selig's policies that cost him millions of dollars to support his competition (while complaining the whole time) that allows him to earn even more on the backend as the value of his franchise soars.

I guess one might argue that it's actually a three-way dance with Fehr included. I grew to respect him even more in the reading of this book. He seems to be the one principled person in this whole mess. To him, it's about the players and their rights. After reading this book, I can better understand why he constantly looked like he was suffering--he had to deal with slippery men like Selig and the owners.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

A behind the scenes and on the field look at baseball from 1992 through 2015, The Game threads a series of stories and narratives together: the rise of Bud Selig as Commissioner, George Steinbrenner and the Yankees, MLB's labor relations, and the rise of PEDs and steroids. Jon Pessah has written a masterpiece, all the more remarkable for the effortless way he keeps a series of stories moving smoothly and coherently, and for the way he is able to create a collage that allows the reader to better understand the motivation and misdirections of the many personalities he covers. To be sure, this book is most likely only for the passionate baseball fan, but a reader looking to understand more about big business in America would find much to enjoy in these pages.

[Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

The access and information in this book is incredible, but the execution is somewhat lacking. The author certainly has a disdain for Bud Selig, which is at least understandable, and an obsession with George Steinbrenner. The book reads as much as a biography of Steinbrenner as it does as an examination of the inner machinations of baseball from 1992 - 2010. This book basically focuses on the Brewers and the Yankees while taking shots at George Bush and Jerry Reinsdorf. Steinbrenner is lauded as a genius, Selig as an evil buffoon, Don Fehr and the players union as victims, and the rest of baseball as irrelevant. A little bit more objectivity and inclusiveness would have drastically improved this book.

[Ceil · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the reviews I read said this book, while entertaining, had way too much detail about the machinations within baseball during the Bud Selig era (roughly 1990 to 2014). So it probably makes me a geek that I didn't find the blow-by-blow description of labor unrest (I mean, you can't say "strikes" in a review of a baseball book without being confusing) and drug use, home runs, and civic bullying the slightest bit overdone. Terrific book for the baseball geek who wants to relive a fascinating era in baseball.

[T · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very insightful on the world of Major League Baseball over the last roughly 20 years. It is an interesting perspective from inside baseball discussed from the vantage of the team owners and the commissioner of baseball. It focuses on the stars and organizations, along with the dynamics of what helped baseball grow in popularity and financially over that time period. This is a great read for a baseball fan.

[Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book, well researched and pulls no punches. Full review is posted at my blog:

http://sportsbookguy.blogspot.com/201...

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three stars if your not a baseball fan!

[Jeffrey Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jon Pessah's "The Game" should go down in history as one of the all-time classic books. He seamlessly connects different aspects of the game during the Bud Selig era in one long running narrative which provides a fuller context to the events as they happened. Writing in a present tense narrative form, instead of a more rigorous academic style work, we get a feel to who the major players are. Though the work is focused on three major players - Bud Selig, Don Fehr and George Steinbrenner (who, coincidentally, all end up in a major argument early in the book) - we are in the room with them as important events unfold. The 1994 strike, contraction, the steroids - all important issues that Pessah covers brilliantly.

Others have mentioned that it was too Yankees centric, but I am going to disagree. Because the Yankees were the primary team to be hit with the luxury tax, won numerous championships during the years covered, and had so many players at the center of the PED controversies - it is hard to write about this period of baseball without treating the Yankees as the paramount team. To treat the Yankees with as much attention as Jerry Reisdorf's White Sox would be a disservice to the narrative that Pessah constructs.

Not only is this book well written, but it is also very well researched. Between the interviews that he conducts, books and reports referenced, and the real-time chronology found in the nation's newspapers - he gets the story right.

If there is anything that he does a disservice to, it's the actual play on the field towards the end of the book. There seems to be a delineation of the actual baseball that's played from the beginning towards the end. In the beginning of the narrative, we are brought through Spring Training, owners meetings, opening day and baseball itself takes center stage. However, in Steinbrenner's final season (the next to last chapter) we move from off season roster moves to spring training to the All-Star break to the World Series - all within a few pages. The Yankees winning their 27th World Series had baseball in only one paragraph. Pessah is trying to hurry through this part of the narrative to his finale - the death of Steinbrenner and retirements of Selig and Fehr. At this point, baseball becomes a bore as he rushes to put everything to completion in a tidy manner. It does a disservice to all that we readers had to endure. A few more pages about the actual game and a few less about the Steinbrenner children would have fixed this and restored the balance.

Lastly, there are a few things that happened during this that required some attention but Pessah missed:
- Death of Ken Caminiti - Pessah mentions him early for his drug use and then abruptly drops him from the narrative. We never know why. Truth is - he died of a drug overdose in October 2004. You would think that with drug use being so central to the narrative, and Caminiti being a central enough character, that this would have received at least a mention. Not a sentence.

- Death of Carl Pohlad - The Minnesota Twins owner passed away in 2009. Considering that Pessah had established Pohlad as a fellow team owner integral to Bud's success in getting named as commissioner, and was a driving force behind the contraction issue, he, also, is dropped suddenly from the narrative. The last reference was that the Minnesota taxpayers agreed to buy him a new stadium, which occurred in 2006, nothing more was stated about Pohlad who died three years later.

- Pete Rose - While Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti pronounced the lifetime ban on Rose for betting on baseball, which was upheld by Commissioner Fay Vincent, who Selig replaced, there have been numerous attempts at getting Rose's lifetime ban lifted and his spot at Cooperstown secured. In the middle of this chronology - 2004 - Pete Rose admitted to betting on baseball, which is something he did not admit to in 1989. That should have been worthy of mentioning. Rose applied for reinstatement in September 1997 and met with Selig in November 2002, but Selig never ruled on the request.

I am very impressed with the thoroughness of this work, minus the three omissions listed. It was because of these omissions that I rated it a four instead of a five. This arguably is one of the best books on the business of major league baseball and professional sports and should be treated as such.

[Tacitus · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book walks us through the events from 1992-2010 well enough. Yet despite the book’s length and scope, it is strikingly superficial on essential matters.

Pessah doesn’t seem to have a good grasp of the labor law that is central to the book, and nor did he give me a clear, dispassionate understanding of the facts or their import. As a consequence, I never knew who was right or what the true stakes were. This was also true for other key aspects of the narrative, such as the business of baseball, taxpayer-funded stadiums, and steroids use.

His analysis od these issues is spotty at best. For example, he does constantly chide Selig for complaining about competitive balance while pointing out that other teams with low payrolls made the playoffs—just not Bud Selig’s Brewers. But overall, Pessah does not convey a sense for how these trends combined to almost destroy baseball, but rather, became successful because of them.

His style is a type of “both sides” journalism, which OK for day-day event reporting, but for a retrospective, expansive book like this, with plenty of room for in-depth analysis, it falls short of expectations. It also tends toward highlighting personality conflicts, but even then never really left me with a solid portrayal of anyone involved, and in spite of the focus on a few key people.

Selig and George Steinbrenner represent two opposites, perhaps. Selig is the Commissioner, Steinbrenner the owner of the Yankees, baseball’s richest team. Selig owns the Brewers, and is constantly carping on the unfairness of baseball’s economy.

Otherwise, it’s difficult to assess their management styles and personalities, or what motivations lay behind their actions, Steinbrenner seems insecure, afraid of failure, but was handled by Joe Torre and Brian Cashman in a way their predecessors were not; how isn’t exactly clear.

Selig, in contrast, seems more mellow, but also maybe passive aggressive at times. However, we never get a sense for why the Brewers were bad in a way that would balance Pessah’s review of how the Yankees became dominant in this period. Maybe the A’s or another small-market team could have served as a better comparison. Maybe the Brewers didn’t have a good scouting program and farm system; we don’t know.

It seems that there was a new era in baseball management, focused on maximizing profits vs winning; if so, it’s not clear that the Brewers were successful at doing this, or what Selig’s true goals were. The Yankees, for their part, spent extravagantly under Steinbrenner and, while dominant, didn’t win every World Series.

Selig was also pushing for a “Yankees tax” and revenue sharing, which ostensibly may have been trying to restore competitive balance. However, it doesn’t seem like teams like the Brewers necessarily put this money back into their teams, in terms of hiring better players. In fact, it could be argued that these agreements incentivized small-market teams to put together bad teams to keep getting free Yankees money. In any case, the long-term implications of Selig’s reshaping of the baseball economy aren’t deeply explored by Pessah.

For his part, Steinbrenner may have been an asshole, and Pessah plays that up, but the Boss didn’t seem like a clear impediment to the Yankees’ post-season success. In fact, he may have been right to want to hire David Ortiz when GM Brian Cashman didn’t. There’s a lot to criticize Steinbrenner about, for sure, but wanting to win certainly isn’t one of them—especially when his foil in this narrative is Selig’s Brewers.

In a book where a reader feels like the author is racing from scene to scene, we’re just left to accept that Steinbrenner was kept in check somehow and Selig was kind of a bungler, but without really understanding the reasons for it. Pessah doesn’t mention analytics or even Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, which came out in this era and seems essential for understanding front office thinking, especially in Selig’s small-market rivals.

The same gaps are evident in the coverage of labor union issues. Don Fehr excoriates Bud Selig in 1996, but beyond the f-bomb laden tirades, what were the terms at stake? Owner after owner threatens to move their team, blackmailing their communities for new stadiums, but Pessah doesn’t lay out the financial realities beyond the headlines and media conference quotations. Players juiced, but some didn’t, and Pessah doesn’t really explore the reasons for how steroids penetrated baseball (and other sports in the era), and what motivated players to use these drugs.

Altogether, the book read like a hollow re-hash of these events, like a script for a documentary. In spite of its alluring title that promises to take us into the “secret world,” while reading it I felt still frustratingly, as ever, outside of it.

[Tom Stamper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the title this is basically a dual biography of Bud Selig and George Steinbrenner circa 1990-2014. Chapters go back and forth even hitting tangential subjects but it all comes right back to what Bud and George are doing.

There is something about Bud Selig I have never liked, but after the opening chapters of this book I think there is a different side to Selig and it’s a side I like very much. That doesn’t last long though as baseball moves through the 1990s. Selig is just a guy who wants there to be a baseball team in Milwaukee despite the fact that Milwaukee is too small to support such a team. His plan is to have everyone give him money. He wants the Wisconsin tax payer to build him a new stadium and he wants the successful baseball cities to give him their money. To do all this he politics his way into becoming commissioner. Bud Selig made a pretty good corporate welfare queen.

The author is all kid gloves with Don Fehr though to the point you wonder if he isn’t married to Fehr’s sister. Because as much as I come to loathe Bud Selig, the strike of 1994 is the brainchild of Fehr because he wants leverage on baseball before their current labor agreement runs out. He knows Selig wants out of the bad deals that owners made earlier when they were outsmarted by Marvin Miller. You may remember that the rest of the 1994 season never was. All of us foolish fans paid real money to see games that were meaningless.

By the time the following season’s spring training opens the owners have replacement players lined up so Fehr leans on the NLRB to make baseball owners heel to the union. The big event here is future supreme court justice Sotomayer ruling against baseball owners for what she said was an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith. Now that sounds great in spirit had the players actually played out the 1994 season, but once they struck and ruined the post-season they were the ones who weren’t behaving in good faith. Neither Sotomayer nor the author ever seem to make this very obvious point.

The courts basically make the owners give in to the players in every way the players want and cities spend taxpayer money to build beautiful stadiums with luxury boxes that the taxpayer cannot afford to visit. And the union and the owners pretend there is no steroids problem until the problem is too big to ignore and then Selig hires George Mitrchell to say there is a steroid problem after all and the union redoubles their commitment to cleaning up the game as long as you don’t punish the players that cheated. It’s almost like everyone in this story is determined to ruin baseball.

The Steinbrenner parts begins with his banishment in the early 1990s through his World Series victories in the mid and late 90s all the way to his death. He doesn’t seem like the changed man the media was so happy to portray. He seems like the kind of boss that can make an otherwise enjoyable job torture. Brian Cashman must have read Marcus Aurelious right before bed every night. George gets a stadium too but unlike Selig actually puts a team on the field that can win.

I’ll have to give the author credit for showing a side of Joe Torre I have never seen depicted. The author sees him as a guy burning out his bullpen after the turn of the century and using his office to make his private business deals. Maybe he was too loyal to the players that won him championships and maybe he wasn’t supportive enough of ARod and some of the others that came later. Maybe he bristled a lot more under Steinbrenner than we were led to believe.

This was a fun book to read and could have been a lot better had the author been willing to see this story from the viewpoint of the fans rather than the player’s union.

[Budd Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the start of 2015, Rob Manfred took over as baseball commissioner from Bud Selig, thus ending an eventful run of more than 20 years.

It's a natural time, then, to look back on that era. That is the primary goal of Jon Pessah, who takes on the job in full with "The Game."

And when I say in full, I mean in full. Pessah checks in with about 600 pages of text, with a long list of interviews and other sources for material.

That's a little overwhelming, but almost all of it is interesting.

Selig took over the job under unusual circumstances. Fay Vincent was his predecessor, but the baseball owners - also known as his bosses - thought that Vincent kept forgetting who was paying his salary. That independence cost Vincent his job.

But who should replace him? Selig, who owned the Milwaukee Brewers at the time, seemed to be something of a consensus-builder in the owner's ranks. He was given the job on an interim basis, an appointment that eventually became permanent to the tune of a couple of decades.

It was, as baseball fans know, a lively time. The 1994 World Series was cancelled due to labor issues, but the sport rebounded to set records in attendance and revenues. Selig deserves some of the credit for that, even if he and other members of baseball management turned a blind eye to the increasing use of steroids by those in the sport. Selig even is shown to have tried to rewrite history on that last subject, changing his public statements on what he knew and when he knew it.

If that weren't enough to fill a book, and it probably was, Pessah made the decision to add a large subplot to the story. During that period of time, the New York Yankees were sometimes hated, sometimes loved, usually winners, and never boring. For the most part, George Steinbrenner took care of that last part while he was still in charge of the team. Steinbrenner may have been the world's worst boss at times, and whether the team's results justified his behavior probably depends on the reader's point of view. But our fascination with his actions remain strong, even a few years after his death.

The stories of Selig and the Yankees run concurrently here, and naturally overlap once in a while. Still, it's easy to wonder whether Pessah would have been better off writing two different books.

What's in this big book, though, is frequently fascinating. The story delights in putting the reader on the scene of events, whether it's in a meeting room among owners, in labor negotiations, or even with movers and shakers as they hear about the attacks on 9/11. There's plenty of "inside stuff," such as details on Joe Torre's relationship with other members of the Yankee organization (it was rocky), to put the events of that era in perspective.

In addition, it's great to have all of the events of this time period put into chronological order. Some developments in the steroid scandals came out immediately, but others dribbled out well after the fact. For example, the government's seizure of drug testing records - held to be illegal years later - didn't receive much publicity at the time.

Pessah doesn't shy away from jumping to some conclusions here. He thinks Selig was a little too consumed with his legacy to act correctly in some cases. And, inevitably at this point, Alex Rodriguez takes a bit of a pounding. Most of the time, he seems to be on the right track.

"The Game" can be a little overwhelming, and it's easy to wonder if the Yankees' story was a bit overtold. But it's hard to argue that all of this didn't deserve to be read somewhere. Baseball fans seeking a good look at the recent past would be well served to dive into this one.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books that I read so far in 2016. Mr. Pessah does a wonderful job writing this modern history of Baseball. The book begins in the early 1990's when the game was in a little bit of crisis mode and chronicles the evolution of the game up until today. Fantastic read for all of the fans like myself, who was born in 1993, who don't remember the labor negotiations of the early 90's.

Then when you think he is done covering the labor side of the game, he does a wonderful job of painting the steroid era, trashing everybody from Selig to Fehr to the congressional leaders. I remember so much from this book, from 2001 and on. I found myself laughing my ass off when he includes McGuire's "I'm not going to talk about the past," comment, the Mitchell report being released, which I wrote a mock newscast for in a radio and TV class when I was a Freshman in High School, and when A-Roid was discovered to be a cheater.

Other moments in the book, from Obama throwing out the first pitch in his mom jeans in 2009, the national mourning when The Boss died, and even the chapter on baseball after 9//11 also brought back many memories for me.

I also loved Mr. Pessah's sharp and witty criticism of George W Bush and the Congress from 2000-2006 when he mentioned many times of all the looming scandals that were ignored when they were pursing the Steroid issue instead of dealing with the countries problems.

Fantastic read which I recommend to every single baseball fan alive.

[Reader Szczap · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book - tons of information, and good storytelling. But let's be honest: this was not a casual read. I'm not complaining, but it felt like a bit of a chore to finish the whole thing. I know what you're thinking... "you're the one that chose to pick it up, don't complain!" I'm not complaining, I'm just stating how I felt. Look, I know a lot of baseball fans, and not many of them are interested in the inner-workings of the game's businessmen. Again, I knew what I was getting into when I started this book, but still, it was difficult to stay entirely engaged in the portions of the book that dealt with the constant negotiation's of Commissioner Selig, Union Leader Fehr, and the many men and women that worked for them. Have to say, the Steinbrenner parts of the book excited me a lot more..... All of this being said, I am glad I read the book. As a baseball fan, it is good to know the big-picture outlook of the sport as a whole - what it takes to run the game. This book gave me a look into that world, and much more. Would I recommend it to the casual baseball fan? Probably not. But I am confident saying it fits a certain type of baseball fan, and for that fan, this book will be right up their alley.