MAKE ME COMMISSIONER: I KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH BASEBALL AND HOW TO FIX IT

Author Jane Leavy Available for Interviews; Contact John Maroon ([email protected]) or Matt Williams ([email protected])

COLUMBIA, Md., Aug. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- 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 and luminaries 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."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jane Leavy is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created, The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, and the comic novel Squeeze Play, which Entertainment Weekly called "the best novel ever written about baseball." She was a staff writer at The Washington Post from 1979 to 1988, first in the Sports section, then writing for the Style section. She covered baseball, tennis, and the Olympics. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated,  and is anthologized in The Great American Sports Page: A Century of Classic Columns and Driven to Write

Praise for Make Me Commissioner

"No one makes me laugh and think and nod my head yes more than Jane Leavy when she is writing about baseball, the sport we both love. Fat chance they'll ever let her become commissioner, but her combination of joy, humor, intelligence, deep historical knowledge, and common sense about how to save the game is precisely what it needs." ―David Maraniss, author of Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero

"Jane Leavy loves baseball. I love Leavy writing about baseball. On the heels of her definitive bios of all-time greats—Koufax, Mantle, and Ruth—Leavy is back to remind us why baseball is the best game and lovingly sculpts solutions to fix the national pastime." ―Dan Shaughnessy, author of The Curse of the Bambino and Francona

"A hysterical—yet practical!—take on saving America's pastime. Make her commissioner!" ―Gish Jen, author of The Resisters and Bad Bad Girl

"Reading this feels like sitting—in great, reasonably priced seats—next to your smartest, funniest, loudest friend for an entire game." —Alex Edelman, award-winning comedian and writer

"As a big-league storyteller, Jane Leavy has all the tools: wise-ass sense of humor, eye for detail, knack for dialogue, a major address book of large personalities—and she knows what she's talking about. The story she makes so lively, about what has gone wrong with what used to be our national pastime, just may be a story about our nation, too." ―Robert Pinsky, three-time United States Poet Laureate

"This book is a dream come true—a literary road trip with one of the game's most convivial commentators and finest writers. But please don't make her commissioner; let her keep writing. Baseball needs her. And baseball fans need to read this book—to quarrel over it, to laugh with it, and to let it remind us why we will always love the game." ―Jonathan Eig, author of King: A Life and Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig

"Leavy captures the frustrations of fans everywhere in this charming, resourceful plea to reinvigorate a sport that "forgot how to be fun." …  Irreverent analysis and fresh ideas from a baseball writer dismayed by the state of the modern game." ―Kirkus Reviews

"The opportunity to read Leavy's prose about baseball is a gift to an audience already enthralled by her previous masterpieces: Sandy Koufax, The Last Boy, and The Big Fella, bestsellers all. The personal touch makes this one different but no less impactful, infused by a love affair with the game that began from her youngest years in her New York City backyard. … The story of baseball is in the people that make the numbers, not in the numbers alone. Leavy gets it, and [Make Me Commissioner] is a home run. If you love baseball, don't miss it." ―The Boston Globe

SOURCE Jane Leavy