by Jane Leavy
First published 2025
Jane Leavy grew up one foul ball away from Yankee Stadium, where her grandmother bought her first glove at Saks Fifth Avenue. She became a pioneering female sportswriter for the Washington Post and wrote acclaimed biographies of Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth. But when searching for her fourth subject, Leavy discovered baseball itself was broken. The Moneyball obsession with data had slowed games to a crawl, sacrificing excitement for statistics. Youth participation has collapsed in disadvantaged communities. Pitcher injuries plague the sport. Major League Baseball has introduced pitch clocks and rule changes, but is it enough? Leavy embarks on a cross-country investigation, interviewing managers Joe Torre and Dave Roberts, Hall of Famers Jim Palmer and Dusty Baker, players like Alex Bregman and Yu Darvish, architect Janet Marie Smith, statistician Bill James, fantasy creator Dan Okrent, and the viral Savannah Bananas entertainment team. Her journey reveals not just what ails America's former pastime, but how baseball still captures imagination and tells human stories that could win back the nation's heart.
Genres: biography, non-fiction, baseball, journalism
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-journalism, personal-journey
Setting: Yankee Stadium, Washington Post
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
384 pages · Hardcover · Grand Central Publishing