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

The action is in the boardroom, not the ballpark, in this dramatic account of the business side of baseball. Journalist Pessah follows the 23-year reign of retiring baseball commissioner Bud Selig. During his tenure, the sport wrestled with labor conflicts over ballooning player salaries, including a work stoppage that cancelled the 1994 World Series; a split between large-market and small-market teams over revenue-sharing; and the simmering scandal of steroid abuse, which threatens to wreck the game (after helping rescue it by fostering crowd-pleasing home run hitters). Pessah sometimes styles Selig as the man who saved baseball, but that judgment is belied by the hard-hitting substance of his narrative, which often shows the comissioner using underhanded tactics and making ill-considered decisions in pursuit of the narrow interests of owners (especially himself). Depicted as more heroic are Don Fehr, the players' union chief who parried Selig's maneuvers, and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, the always entertaining tyrant who built great teams while improving the sport's finances. Pessah includes engaging play-by-play from key games, but his focus is on contract negotiations, revenue models, politics, deal-cutting, and the commercial calculations behind moving a team or injecting steroids. The resulting account of off-field strategizing is as engrossing as any stadium showdown. (May)