Recent polls have placed football ahead of baseball in popularity. Does this reflect football's rise or baseball's decline? Why has the national pastime--a title perhaps becoming inaccurate--fallen behind other major sports? Is the trend reversible? This book identifies the most substantial and persistent issues that have impaired Major League Baseball's development. Chapters cover inflationary player, team and game costs; changes in baseball's fan base; congestion in urban areas that host big league ballclubs; the negligent and irrational actions (some of it criminal) of players, owners, league officials, and the players' union; and the maldistribution of power among the major league franchises. Six major reforms needed to boost the popularity of baseball are identified.

This study considers the importance of location for new and relocated major league franchises in the more than 130 years since the National League was founded. Included are an analysis of market differences and similarities, team performances and demographics and area economic comparisons. Market data are used to predict future expansions and relocations of major league teams.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig proposes that Major League Baseball should contract or eliminate two teams for the 2002 season. Selig claims that 25 out of 30 teams in the league are losing money and contraction is the only way to stop the bleeding. Forbes magazine found that discrepancies in reporting by the teams meant only 10 teams lost money in 2001. The fight over contraction has put owners against the players union with both sides forgetting about a bigger factor: baseball fans. Selig must decide if baseball and its fans can survive contraction and the transition from a game to a business.

The Crisis, founded by W.E.B. Du Bois as the official publication of the NAACP, is a journal of civil rights, history, politics, and culture and seeks to educate and challenge its readers about issues that continue to plague African Americans and other communities of color. For nearly 100 years, The Crisis has been the magazine of opinion and thought leaders, decision makers, peacemakers and justice seekers. It has chronicled, informed, educated, entertained and, in many instances, set the economic, political and social agenda for our nation and its multi-ethnic citizens.

A New York Times bestseller Foreword by Doris Kearns Goodwin The longtime Commissioner of Major League Baseball provides an unprecedented look inside professional baseball today, focusing on how he helped bring the game into the modern age and revealing his interactions with players, managers, fellow owners, and fans nationwide. More than a century old, the game of baseball is resistant to change—owners, managers, players, and fans all hate it. Yet, now more than ever, baseball needs to evolve—to compete with other professional sports, stay relevant, and remain America’s Pastime it must adapt. Perhaps no one knows this better than Bud Selig who, as the head of MLB for more than twenty years, ushered in some of the most important, and controversial, changes in the game’s history—modernizing a sport that had remained unchanged since the 1960s. In this enlightening and surprising book, Selig goes inside the most difficult decisions and moments of his career, looking at how he worked to balance baseball’s storied history with the pressures of the twenty-first century to ensure its future. Part baseball story, part business saga, and part memoir, For the Good of the Game chronicles Selig’s career, takes fans inside locker rooms and board rooms, and offers an intimate, fascinating account of the frequently messy process involved in transforming an American institution. Featuring an all-star lineup of the biggest names from the last forty years of baseball, Selig recalls the vital games, private moments, and tense conversations he’s shared with Hall of Fame players and managers and the contentious calls he’s made. He also speaks candidly about hot-button issues the steroid scandal that threatened to destroy the game, telling his side of the story in full and for the first time. As he looks back and forward, Selig outlines the stakes for baseball’s continued transformation—and why the changes he helped usher in must only be the beginning. Illustrated with sixteen pages of photographs.

The past 25 years have been the most dynamic in the history of Major League Baseball, from the league’s recovery after the players’ strike to the growth of analytics and the rise of new World Series contenders. In The Reshaping of America’s Game: Major League Baseball after the Players' Strike, Bryan Soderholm-Difatte reflects on the factors and challenges that have changed major league baseball since the 1994-1995 players’ strike. He examines the consolidation of power in the Commissioner’s Office, the influx of Latin and Asian players, the boom in new stadiums, the influence of analytics in reshaping how rosters are constructed, the relationship between managers and the front office, and the rise of the power-game between pitchers and batters that has led to unprecedented strikeout and home run totals. While Major League Baseball continues to develop and grow, the league has had to grapple with repeated steroids scandals, the struggle of small-market teams to remain competitive, and the “forever” unfinished business between players and owners over free agency and fair compensation. The Reshaping of America’s Game provides a detailed and intriguing review of the many issues affecting the national pastime during the liveliest years in MLB history. The Reshaping of America’s Game, together with Soderholm-Difatte’s America’s Game, Tumultuous Times in America’s Game, and America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era, form the author’s complete, definitive history of Major League Baseball.