Make her commissioner? Author Jane Leavy has a lot of ideas — and an upcoming book — on how to fix what ails baseball.

Boston Globe

3 days ago

It has lost, in the stirring conclusion of author Jane Leavy in her excellent, soon-to-be-published book 'Make Me Commissioner: I Know What's Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It,' the human element. As the world at large grapples with the consequences of deferring to Artificial Intelligence in our daily lives, baseball, as Leavy's book expertly points out, is the canary in the coalmine.
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The connective tissue to the history of the game has frayed to the point of breaking, evidenced in heartbreaking fashion in
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'I went in search of smart guys, funny guys, honest guys — answers. I asked everyone the same questions,' she writes in the book's earliest pages. 'What happened? How did baseball lose America? Why doesn't it move people the way it once did, the way only it can, the way it still moves me? Who now speaks for the game? And what can I do to help?'
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The answer came to her when commissioner Rob Manfred announced in early 2024 that he will step down when his contract expires in 2029: 'Make me commissioner. I know what's wrong and how to fix it.'
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The opportunity to read Leavy's prose about baseball is a gift to an audience already enthralled by her previous masterpieces: '
'Baseball was a place where I could express that part of me that girls and women heretofore were not so welcome to express,' she said in a telephone call this week. 'There was that, and there was clearly my grandmother. Somebody has to give you permission to be who you are or to become who you are. That person was my grandmother. She lived in The Yankee Arms at [New York's] 157th and Walton Avenue, two blocks from [Yankee Stadium]. Sound travels up those east/west streets, it bounces off apartment houses, and I could sit by her window and hear the thwacks, the cracks of the bat, the crowd. It was my imaginary friend.'
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And ultimately, Leavy's life's work, from younger days as a baseball writer for the Washington Post to a career as a preeminent baseball biographer. And as she began this most recent journey for solutions to a game gone awry, years-long conversations with men such as Alex Bregman, Dusty Baker, Ron Washington or Joe Torre all came back to the same idea. The humanity of baseball, the links of a historical chain that had always separated it from other sports, the reverence for what had gone before and the honoring of that history by learning to repeat it … is disappearing with each passing day.
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Bregman, the Red Sox third baseman, is a fascinating representative of the complicated intersection of past and present, described by Leavy as 'an old soul in a young man's body, whose old-soul swing, honed in another era, reasserts itself at the worst possible times. Formed by the past, perfected in the present, he is in a constant battle for control; constantly trying to balance the prerogatives of old and new.'
Bregman spoke with Leavy about his childhood love for Derek Jeter's famous 'flip play' from the 2001 playoffs, when baseball instinct and human practice collided in his perfect redirection of an outfield throw that cut Jeremy Giambi down at the plate. Seven-year-old Alex re-created the play in his own backyard.
Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter's "flip play" in the 2001 playoffs inspired many, including current Red Sox third baseman Alex Bregman.
NYT
'But by the time he came of age as a major leaguer, analytics dictated defensive positioning that ate into instinct. That troubles him,' Leavy wrote.
Bregman told her: 'When you lose instinct and when you lose creativity, you lose people talking about the game and people continuing to grow ideas in their minds, the instinctual things that they could do to win a game.'
Amen. Longtime baseball lovers can handle change. We appreciate how much the pitch clock has returned game times to under-three-hour normalcy. But so, too, can we pine for echoes of the past now gone — ace-vs.-ace pitching matchups, identifiable relief pitchers, fewer Tommy John surgeries, more balls in play over the seemingly binary strikeout/home run choice of today. Leavy has ideas on it all, such as expanded pitching staffs with hockey-like nightly scratch lists, for one.
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She addresses the off-the-field nostalgia, too, suggesting free tickets for children 10 and under when with a paying adult, meet-and-greets in the stands with players on the injured list, a designated postgame autograph signer, and a designated section at every game with $25 tickets plus all you can eat. Visits to summer league parks on Cape Cod or off-beat games with the Savannah Bananas proved to her that it's OK to think like they do in providing entertainment while not altering the integrity of the major league game.
Eldredge Park, home of the Orleans Firebirds, features heavily in Jane Leavy's book.
Globe Staff Photo by Stan Grossf
And she takes on pressing issues, suggesting proceeds from gambling partners fund youth academies equivalent to the ones built in Latin America in every major league city, recruiting young Black players whose major league presence has decreased dramatically over decades.
Ultimately, Leavy believes, baseball can keep its analytics, but not at the expense of the human element. Like Torre, the Hall of Famer, told her, 'They're trying to make an imperfect game, perfect. I resent that.'
The story of baseball is in the people that make the numbers, not in the numbers alone.
Leavy gets it, and her book is a home run. If you love baseball, don't miss it.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at