The incred­i­ble inside sto­ry of base­bal­l’s last twen­ty years — and how they com­plete­ly changed the game.

In the fall of 1992, Amer­i­ca’s nation­al pas­time is in cri­sis. Rev­enues are flat-lin­ing, its fan base is erod­ing, and the sport will soon do the unthink­able: can­cel a World Series for the first time in its his­to­ry. The own­ers are at war with each oth­er, their nev­er-end­ing 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’s the genius of three men — Com­mis­sion­er Bud Selig, Yan­kees own­er George Stein­bren­ner, and union leader Don Fehr — and their strug­gle for pow­er that res­cues the game from self-destruc­tion. Played against a tableau of stun­ning ath­let­ic feats, high-stakes labor wars, and back-room polit­i­cal deals, The Game is a rig­or­ous­ly researched account of how Selig, Stein­bren­ner, and Fehr turned dis­as­ter into base­bal­l’s Gold­en Age.