Bud Selig Was Baseball’s Great Hero, Says Bud Selig

For 22 years, from 1992 to 2015, Bud Selig oversaw Major League Baseball, an era of massive change and growth for America’s Pastime. He restructured the league’s divisions and playoffs, initiated interleague play, introduced the World Baseball Classic, and helped grow a technology arm now worth billions of dollars.

To hear the former commissioner tell it in his new memoir, For the Good of the Game (William Morrow, $29), Selig inherited a “f---ing nightmare” but heroically steered the league through unprecedented labor strife, cleaned up a drug problem that threatened the integrity of the game, and eased an economic disparity between teams that could have put baseball, as we know it, out of business. He uses the book to tout his record on racial diversity, the 20 stadiums built during his tenure, and the introduction of the wild card. The league’s revenue grew from $1.2 billion to more than $9 billion a year over his tenure, and franchise valuations grew even faster.