Jane Leavy, baseball’s preeminent writer, hardly recognizes the game she loves anymore. Relentless pursuit of competitive edges on and off the field have killed the essential charms of the great game, chewed up some of its best talent, and left fans to root for little more than algorithms yielding fractional advantages and analytically dictated efficiencies.
Now, join Leavy on a behind the scenes road trip through the far corners of the baseball world as she sets out to uncover how the game broke, and to find the people and the ideas that just might bring it back in Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong With Baseball and How to Fix It.
Tough, comic, and insightful, this insider’s view by the bestselling author of Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, and The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created takes readers from the Cape Cod Baseball League with “Bette-the-dog Leavy,” mascot of the Orleans Cardinals, to the data-driven mecca Driveline, to the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, to MLB HQ, and major league, minor league, independent league and Savannah Banana dugouts to gather old-school wisdom, new-school intelligence, and against-all-odds reasons to hold out hope for baseball’s future.
Leavy hits the road to see how well the rules MLB imposed in 2023 are working while gathering new ideas and support for her solutions from legends andluminaries like Joe Torre, Dave Roberts, Jim Palmer, Dusty Baker, Ron Washington, Kevin Cash, Alex Bregman, Francisco Lindor, Ozzie Albies, J.P. Crawford, Bill James, Daniel Okrent, Janet Marie Smith, and more. Along the way, she finds not only what’s wrong with baseball but also what’s undeniably and enduringly right with it, with the people who play it and with the people who love it.
Every inch a modern-day critique of the soulless and reckless modern-day pursuit of proficiency at all costs, Make Me Commissioner is also a love letter, telling the story of how baseball illuminates character, gives us a sense of who we are and what might and should matter most to us, spins yarns that surprise, delight, and inspire us, firing the imagination like no other game, like no other field of American life.
More than just practical solutions for how to save the game, with her sharp eye and quick wit, Leavy offers up thoughtful, often hilarious and always spot-on reminders of what baseball can do to save us. Baseball is our canary in the coal mine, Leavy writes. If we can remain connected to what players and managers call The Human Element, and not passively give ourselves over to the unrelenting demands of algorithms and AI, we can, she argues, stay connected to something essential and irreplaceable about who we are and want to be.
The human element includes: respecting the limitations ulnar collateral ligaments, which are tearing faster than cheap wrapping paper on Christmas morning. Make Me Commissioner takes a deep dive into the nightmare of “max heave” pitching with up-to-the-minute reporting on the Tommy John epidemic—to date, 45 additional surgeries since January.
Jane proposes: Expanding the pitching staff and creating a healthy scratch list as in the NHL, allowing managers to give beleaguered relievers a blow, but limiting the number they can use daily to eleven, nudging the game back to the era of aces and matchups that gave you a reason to go to the ball park. To that end: no pitcher may be removed from a game during an inning unless or until he has been charged with a run allowed in that inning. Any manager who removes a pitcher after seven perfect innings loses his managerial challenges for ten days.
The human element means: undoing the benign neglect that allowed the percentage of Black major leaguers to crater from nearly twenty percent to the current six percent. Commissioner Rob Manfred is trying but despite his efforts the number of Blacks on opening day rosters increased by .3 percent.
Jane proposes: Using MLB’s gambling profits to fund youth academies equivalent to the ones built in Latin America in every major league city.
The human element requires: baseball to grow a pair and grow a new audience. Market the game spikes-high to parents as the sane alternative to brain-eating collision sports like tackle football. “Teach them the game they’re going to remember forever.” It means limiting the number of showcases young pitchers are allowed to participate in to two a year.
Jane proposes: All kids ten and under, accompanied by an adult, get in free. If the Chicago Cubs had done that in 2024, and gave every kid a free hot dog, soda, ice cream, and a cap, it would have cost $4 million compared to the $21 million they paid Jason Heyward to play for the Dodgers.
The human element means: learning from the goofy Savannah Bananas, who got a contract with ESPN the week MLB lost theirs. Baseball doesn’t have to do what the Bananas do, they have to think the way the Bananas think. “Fans first, entertainment always.”
Jane proposes: meet and greets in the stands during every home game by players on the Injured List. No one ever pulled a groin shaking hands. A designated post-game autograph signer. A designated section at every game with $25 tickets plus all you can eat.
The human element demands: fixing baseball’s insane economic system model that allows Mets owner Steve Cohen to sign free agent Juan Soto for $765 million while nine other teams spent less than $20 million. As Hall of Famer Jim Palmer told her, “You would think there has to be a way where you can make a fan in Pittsburgh feel as important as a fan that comes to a Mets game. There’s so much there to share.”
Jane proposes: three new systems for making the game fair.
The human element insists: on meeting the present moment with imagination to make baseball cool again like the hand-held game “Beat the Bot” devised by the MIT Sports Analytics Lab to allow kids to interact with the game on the field the way they interact with the rest of the world. Tested at Eldredge Park with resounding success.
This is why Bill “Spaceman” Lee told her: “I know why you should be commissioner. You’re not for the players. You’re not for the owners. You’re for the game.”
HIGHLIGHT QUOTES:
Dusty Baker on baseball’s new rules: “Shee-it, it ain’t all fixed.”
Joe Torre on analytics: “They’re trying to make an imperfect game, perfect. I resent that.”
Morgan Sword, MLB executive vice president: “People don’t come to see velo. They come to see a story.”
J.P. Crawford, shortstop Seattle Mariners: “They’ve taken the beauty of the game away from baseball.”
Roger Angell, late baseball writer for the New Yorker: “I hate modern baseball.”
Buck Showalter, four-time manager of the year: “It’s just boring faster.”
