If you can find a better account of Major League Baseball’s most important issues and changes over the last half-century, read it ... Selig pulls no punches ... could have been titled Saving Baseball, and Bud Selig turns this uplifting story into a compelling read about how he overcame one obstacle after another off the field in order to preserve and improve the quality of the game on it.
I was pleasantly surprised to find For The Good Of The Game to be charming, informative and even entertaining ... outside of...rare exceptions, Selig's book is about the best memoir you can hope to read from a powerful professional sports insider. Much of that is due to the deep love and respect that Selig carries for the game of baseball ... The book's charm also comes from the Forrest Gump-style encounters Selig kept collecting throughout his life ... The book certainly has many of the usual flaws of a famous person's memoir: Several anecdotes and phrases resurface from chapter to chapter. The writing style isn't consistent. A few sections feel like the places Selig decided to stuff in all the moments that an editor must have told him readers would expect to hear about ... I wish he had been a bit more reflective on what he, as the head of Major League Baseball, could have done to limit the problem [of steroids], or fix it faster.
Mr. Selig may be too inclined to portray himself as an honest broker seeking a middle ground between hot heads on both sides of the bargaining table, but there is merit in highlighting the intransigence of players as well as owners when it comes to assigning the blame for baseball’s troubles. As befits the man known as 'Budget Bud' by team owners, he prefers to focus on the bottom line ... While celebrating baseball’s financial success, Mr. Selig is silent about the erosion of baseball’s once dominant hold on the nation’s sports fans ... Mr. Selig insists that 'baseball is an essential part of people’s everyday lives' and firmly believes in the 'unique role baseball plays in American life.' But that may be more a declaration of faith than a true assessment of the sport’s current status—and future prospects.
For the Good of the Game, by former Brewers owner and Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, reduces the sport to a series of numbers. If baseball is designed to lull viewers into a contemplative state, its hypnotic power seems to have failed to take effect on its former commissioner. Despite Selig’s half-century in baseball, For the Good of the Game barely gestures at an answer to what the game is good for ... curious admissions leave the sense that Selig has no idea why he’s writing this memoir ... Even when a rationale for the book heaves into view, as with Selig’s brag that no one else had 'understood the history of the commissioner’s office, and had studied it, the way I had,' Selig leaves it curiously unfulfilled ... Ultimately, Selig writes with all the soul of an accountant seeking a particularly good tax incentive package, measuring the success of the league in the rising value of franchises and spinoff companies.
Selig, the controversial ninth commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1992 to 2015, offers a captivating look at the evolution of the game of baseball throughout his tenure ... a fascinating memoir that touches on sports and business from one of baseball's top executives ... Selig's extraordinary time as commissioner is a story worth telling. All baseball fans, especially those interested in how the sport overcame the steroid era, owe it to themselves to take a look.
How Selig’s childhood love for a game resulted in him becoming an owner is what makes this book an interesting read ... For The Good of the Game is about labor conflicts. It’s about the ongoing battle between players and owners. At times the problems documented by Selig in his book are not good for the game ... Selig’s book reveals the personality and interests of many of the baseball owners. Some of them are only interested in what’s good for their team. Selig in his book often compares major league baseball with the National Football league. Why is one sport more successful than the other, and shouldn’t baseball be held to a higher standard? This belief is the moral compass at the center of Selig’s book ... an insider’s look at what makes the game of baseball so amazing and joyful to watch ... Selig has also given us a book that captures his love for the game. There is goodness here, a transforming goodness.
Baseball fans will appreciate Selig’s coverage of the key issues that arose during his tenure ... Selig does not express a lot of modesty or offer much in the way of confessions of failure, human or professional ... A broken-bat blooper that falls for a double.
