For the Good of the Game: The Inside Story of the Surprising and Dramatic Transformation of Major League Baseball

By Bud Selig

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0062905953
• ISBN13: 9780062905956
• Release Date: July 2019
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

23 Years as MLB Commissioner

Bud Selig had a hard job, and he’s not afraid to tell us that. Yes, the job of baseball commissioner is not as fun as being an owner or super fan, but it is a gig with impact. Sometimes Selig lived up to the task, sometimes not. He’s very careful what he says, almost too politically gracious, but if you get past some of the platitudes there is a ton of great MLB history here. The story of steroid use runs throughout the book with more villains than heroes. Selig tells you he did all he could to clean up the game. You’ll have to decide if you agree or not. Meanwhile, you get to see the game grow to 30 teams, breathtaking free agency deals, and a lot of home runs, legit and not. If you love the game you’ll love a lot of the book, not all of it, buy hey, that’s the game.