The Bookshelf Conversation #200: Jane Leavy

I don’t know when it started or ended but Topps used to reserve cards ending in double-00 for the superstars of the game. Mays, Mantle, Koufax, Carew, Seaver, and Reggie have all appeared multiple times.

So I felt it only appropriate to follow their lead and save the 200th Bookshelf Conversation for one of my GOATs.

This is the third time Jane Leavy has graced this virtual pages with her insights. I’m going to have to come up with a Saturday Night Live version of the “Five Timers Club.”

Leavy has written several best-selling biographies of the legends of baseball:

She also published Squeeze Play: A Novel in 1990.

So now for something completely different: Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It.

As mentioned in previous posts, there have been several titles on the topic of how to mend a broken heart. Oh, sorry, that’s a Bee Gees song. Those were published after some tough times, like the infamous strike of 1994-5. Luminaries such as Joe Morgan, Mike Schmidt, Bob Costas and others have weighed in, but none have shown the imagination that Leavy has in her latest offering. To be fair to her predecessors, they were dealing with a different set of circumstances. Now we have a more disenfranchised fan base, especially among the younger generation. Then there’s increasing increasing competition from other sports and activities. Not to mention what I call “data fatigue,” the constant bombardment of new stats and analytics that makes the tenets of Moneyball seem like your grandpa’s stories.

I don’t have smoking jackets like SNL, but I’ll come up with something, Jane.