The Game

Inside the Secret World of Major League Baseball's Power Brokers

De: Jon Pessah

Narrado por: Jeremy Arthur

The incredible inside story of power, money, and baseball's last twenty years.

In the fall of 1992, America's National Pastime is in crisis and already on the path to the unthinkable: cancelling a World Series for the first time in history. The owners are at war with each other, their decades-long battle with the players has turned America against both sides, and the players' growing addiction to steroids will threaten the game's very foundation.

It is a tipping point for baseball, a crucial moment in the game's history that catalyzes a struggle for power by three strong-willed men: Commissioner Bud Selig, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and union leader Don Fehr. It's their uneasy alliance at the end of decades of struggle that pulls the game back from the brink and turns it into a money-making powerhouse that enriches them all.

This is the real story of baseball, played out against a tableau of stunning athletic feats, high-stakes public battles, and backroom political deals -- with a supporting cast that includes Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, Joe Torre and Derek Jeter, George Bush and George Mitchell, and many more.

Drawing from hundreds of extensive, exclusive interviews throughout baseball, The Game is a stunning achievement: a rigorously reported book and the must-read, fly-on-the-wall, definitive account of how an enormous struggle for power turns disaster into baseball's Golden Age.

Reseñas de la Crítica

Finalist for the 2015 CASEY Award for Best Baseball Book of the Year

"A compelling, high-stakes look at baseball.... Pessah does a great job of providing glimpses of conversations fans were not privy to, while placing them in context by describing what was happening on the field in that moment. Essential for fans of 1990s- and 2000s-era baseball."—Library Journal (starred review)

"The action is in the boardroom, not the ballpark, in this dramatic account of the business side of baseball.... Pessah includes engaging play-by-play from key games, but his focus is on contract negotiations, revenue models, politics, deal-cutting, and the commercial calculations behind moving a team or injecting steroids. The resulting account of off-field strategizing is as engrossing as any stadium showdown."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Engaging, nitty-gritty account of the Bud Selig era, including backroom battles with George Steinbrenner, Don Fehr and steroids."—Sports Illustrated

"Pessah has made his book read like a great novel.... The author also brilliantly shows the impact the game had and continues to have on American life, and how it maintains its prominent place in the cycle and fabric of our country's summers. Pessah is adept at revealing the ebb and flow of fan despair, anger, and joy."—Russell P. Gantos Jr., New York Journal of Books

"In clear, accessible prose, [THE GAME] covers strikes, steroids and everything in between. Not an easy task. The most memorable sections are about Steinbrenner. Pessah deftly captures the man's heavy-handed--and often underhanded--leadership."—Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times

One of "The Season's Best Baseball Books"

"A poignant account of the power struggle between three men: MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and player's union leader Don Fehr."—Robert Birnbaum, The Daily Beast

"This might be the definitive account of how front offices control Major League Baseball.... Pessah crafts freeze-frame descriptions of the most critical backroom moments of the modern era...."—Rob Fischer, Men's Journal

"There are lots of fresh notes, quotes and anecdotes in The Game, but its chief value for those who care is its meticulous reconstruction of the fraught era.... The most compelling parts of The Game deal with baseball's abject failure to confront the steroid plague."—Edward Kosner, Wall Street Journal

"A gritty and sensational history of America's national pastime... a juicy and engrossing story that reads like a thriller, with a star supporting cast... A must-read before 2016 labor negotiations begin. Pessah calls the game perfectly."—Marilyn Dahl, Shelf Awareness

You don't have to like baseball to enjoy this book

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Absolutely! I don't know anything about baseball, or particularly care about sports in general, but I was mesmerized by the story on many levels--self-indulged athletes, power brokers, and rich owners.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Steinbrenner--I had not known about him or his history of ownership of the Yankees. He used his money and power to cajole, manipulate and win.

What does Jeremy Arthur bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He helped engage me with a story I was not sure I could care about.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The unfolding of the drug use and how "baseball" reacted (slowly) to it. Power and money were part of this story, too

Any additional comments?

I highly recommend this book even if you are not interested in baseball. It was one of the best books I listened to this year.

A mist for Milwuakee Brewers fans

If you love Bud or hate him you'll understand him much better. What will be his true legacy?

So great!

If you are a fan of the business of baseball - the way it works behind the scenes - this is the book you've been waiting for.

Should have been called Bud and George

I'm fully aware you can't have a baseball book about the last 20 or 30 years and night feature the New York Yankees prominently in the book. The book I'd listen to before this was the Yankee years by Joe Torre and at least of the fourth of a book was basically repeated from the Yankee years. I learned more than I knew going into it it's a good read or listen for any baseball fan. But it's basically about bud selig and George Steinbrenner. I did come away liking George Steinbrenner more than I used to which after listening to the Yankee years was really hard.

How The Game Exposed Everything I Love (and Hate) About Baseball

I just finished The Game by Jon Pessah and honestly… this is one of the wildest and best baseball books I’ve ever read.
And I don’t mean that lightly. I love baseball. Like love baseball. The smell of the dirt, the sound of the ball popping into the glove, the crack of the bat, throwing, catching, arguing about stats, digging into analytics, obsessing over WAR and OPS, telling Babe Ruth stories one minute and Shohei Ohtani stories the next. I love the mythology of it all — Abner Doubleday lore, Jackie Robinson breaking barriers, generations of legends stacking on top of each other to build this ridiculous, beautiful sport.
That’s why this book hit me so hard.
Because Pessah doesn’t just talk about the game on the field — he goes straight into the back rooms. The politics. The money. The power plays. The stuff fans usually only hear whispers about. And once you read it, you start going, ohhh… that’s why baseball is the way it is.
I already knew about Kenesaw Mountain Landis and the Black Sox scandal and how that basically forced MLB to create a commissioner in the first place to protect the integrity of the sport. But what really got me was seeing how that office slowly morphed from “guardian of the game” into something way more corporate. Bud Selig especially. The way he navigated the steroid era, the fact that he was literally the Brewers’ owner while also being commissioner, the political maneuvering that helped him rise… man. That was illuminating. And not in a flattering way.
I already wasn’t a huge Selig guy. This book made me like him even less. Same with Rob Manfred. Yeah, both have overseen some good changes — pace of play stuff, pitch clock, all that — but Pessah makes it pretty clear how often owners go back to the same old moves every few years: cry poor, push for more control, talk up salary caps, try to limit player pay, mess with arbitration and free agency, basically try to roll things backward instead of forward.
And the behind-the-scenes stuff is what really hooked me. The backstabbing. The alliances. The ownership drama. George Steinbrenner, Frank McCourt, Arte Moreno types — you start realizing how much individual owners shape entire eras of baseball, for better or worse. Why the Yankees built that monster dynasty. Why the Dodgers now feel like they’re running the modern version of it. It’s not just payroll — it’s philosophy, infrastructure, power, patience, timing.
That’s what makes the book so addictive. It’s messy. It’s political. It’s sometimes ugly. But it also makes you appreciate how miraculous it is that the actual game on the field is still so pure and magical when the business side is such controlled chaos.
By the end I was just sitting there like… yeah. Baseball is beautiful. Baseball is broken. Baseball is brilliant. Baseball is frustrating. Baseball is mythology and spreadsheets and billionaires and rookies chasing dreams all rolled into one.
If you love the history of the sport, the labor wars, the commissioner’s office, the steroid era, the power struggles, the analytics revolution, and the personalities that have shaped the league — this book is a must-read.