Jane Leavy knows baseball. And she really loves baseball. She’s a former sportswriter and author of best-sellers about Sandy Koufax and Mickey Mantle. Her new book is Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix it. The book is a skillful mix of history, personal connections, and insights based on watching innumerable games as a lifetime fan. She writes about the way baseball has been affected by changes in technology, from “moneyball” math to television cameras intruding on the playing field, the shift in ownership from families to billionaires, even the way stadiums are designed, the shift from “the sun is the pitchclock,” keeping the action going to one estimate that there are only 17 minutes of action in a baseball game. She explains how they have affected the game and what it would take to get a new generation of fans to fall in love with what we used to call America’s Pastime. …
What comes through on every page is how much she loves every bit of the game, its players, and its coaches and managers. She also loves baseball movies, and I asked her to give me her favorites.
