The Reshaping of America's Game: Major League Baseball after the Players' Strike

by Bryan Soderholm-Difatte

Overview

The past 25 years have been the most dynamic in the history of Major League Baseball, from the league’s recovery after the players’ strike to the growth of analytics and the rise of new World Series contenders.

In The Reshaping of America’s Game: Major League Baseball after the Players' Strike, Bryan Soderholm-Difatte reflects on the factors and challenges that have changed major league baseball since the 1994-1995 players’ strike. He examines the consolidation of power in the Commissioner’s Office, the influx of Latin and Asian players, the boom in new stadiums, the influence of analytics in reshaping how rosters are constructed, the relationship between managers and the front office, and the rise of the power-game between pitchers and batters that has led to unprecedented strikeout and home run totals.

While Major League Baseball continues to develop and grow, the league has had to grapple with repeated steroids scandals, the struggle of small-market teams to remain competitive, and the “forever” unfinished business between players and owners over free agency and fair compensation. The Reshaping of America’s Game provides a detailed and intriguing review of the many issues affecting the national pastime during the liveliest years in MLB history.

The Reshaping of America’s Game, together with Soderholm-Difatte’s America’s Game, Tumultuous Times in America’s Game, and America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era, form the author’s complete, definitive history of Major League Baseball.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538145951
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	04/23/2021
Pages:	308
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.45(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Bryan Soderholm-Difatte is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and a regular contributor to The Baseball Research Journal. He is the author of The Golden Era of Major League Baseball: A Time of Transition and Integration, America’s Game: A History of Major League Baseball through World War II, Tumultuous Times in America’s Game: From Jackie Robinson’s Breakthrough to the War over Free Agency, and America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era: From Strike to Pandemic,all published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: Prelude to Baseball’s Great Reckoning

PART I

1. Baseball in Recovery
2. Superpowers: How the Braves and Yankees Got That Way
3. “Chicks Dig the Long Ball”
4. Selig’s Growth Legacy

PART II

1. Baseball’s Asian-Pacific Tide
2. Baseball’s Finest Hours
3. Small Markets on the Brink
4. From the A’s to the Rays and Beyond: Baseball’s Analytics Revolution
5. Baseball’s Diversity Scorecard
6. The Latin Tsunami and the Second Cuban Wave

PART III

1. The Dark (Steroids) Side of Recovery
2. The Owners’ Take: Show Me the Money
3. Where Losing Was a Winning Proposition
4. Baseball’s Power Dynamic: Muscling Up and Mowing Them Down
5. Strategizing Pitching
6. Back to the Future: Not the Same Free Agency
7. Baseball’s Year of Discontent: From Astros Cheatskates to the Coronavirus Pandemic

Quotes and Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Editorial Reviews

The story of baseball is evolving and shifting constantly, and usually we have to wait 20 years before someone triest to make sense of it all. Here Brian Soderholm-Difatte has bravely stepped in to explain the past decade, before the dust has even settled. It is a delight to be reminded of the stories we had already forgotten.

Mark Armour

A first-class study of an important era in recent baseball history. Well written, it will appeal to baseball scholars and fans alike.

John Rossi

In an exhaustive examination of Major League Baseball over the last 25 years, Soderholm-Difatte provides keen insight into the current state of the sport. Soderholm-Difatte’s great strength lies in his examination of the steroid era and the damages it wrought, representation of non-white people in baseball management, and new baseball analytics which look for the most productive players through statistical scrutiny. An engaging overview of the sport.

From the Publisher

04/01/2021

In an exhaustive examination of Major League Baseball over the last 25 years, Soderholm-Difatte (America's Game) provides keen insight into the current state of the sport. In many ways, the book covers the same ground as a book like Jon Pessah's 2015 The Game, but this account is a useful update, which includes discussion of baseball's decision to proceed with a shortened, but highly eventful 2020 season amid the COVID pandemic. This book makes clear that, like to other businesses, the MLB is concerned with making the highest profits possible. Much of the last two and a half decades, since the 1994 lockout which abruptly ended the season without a World Series, have been a long and public labor dispute between owners and players. Each side wanting to claim larger pieces of the financial pie has not endeared them to fans, the author says. VERDICT Soderholm-Difatte's great strength lies in his examination of the steroid era and the damages it wrought, representation of non-white people in baseball management, and new baseball analytics which look for the most productive players through statistical scrutiny. An engaging overview of the sport.—Brian Renvall, New Mexico State Univ. Carlsbad

Library Journal