The Reshaping Of America S Game

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.

A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title "Baseball fans actively following the sport in the 1990s and 2000s will greatly appreciate this fantastic book and its detailed insight." —Library Journal Major League Baseball has had a long and storied history, but perhaps no era has been as competitive and unpredictable as the past 25 years, with an expanded postseason making for an unexpected and entertaining end to each season. In America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era: From Strike to Pandemic, Bryan Soderholm-Difatte provides a compelling examination of Major League Baseball since the 1994 players’ strike. He reveals how the last quarter century has been the most dynamic in MLB history and argues that bringing wild-card teams and the division-series round into the postseason mix have fundamentally changed how dynasties should be perceived. Following the major storylines for all 30 teams, along with the division races and state of dynasties over the past 25 years, America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era is a captivating look into a new age of baseball. America’s Game in the Wild-Card Era, together with Soderholm-Difatte’s America’s Game, Tumultuous Times in America’s Game, and The Reshaping of America’s Game, form the author’s complete, definitive history of Major League Baseball.

The globalizing influence of professional sports Professional sports today have truly become a global force, a common language that anyone, regardless of their nationality, can understand. Yet sports also remain distinctly local, with regional teams and the fiercely loyal local fans that follow them. This book examines the twenty-first-century phenomenon of global sports, in which professional teams and their players have become agents of globalization while at the same time fostering deep-seated and antagonistic local allegiances and spawning new forms of cultural conflict and prejudice. Andrei Markovits and Lars Rensmann take readers into the exciting global sports scene, showing how soccer, football, baseball, basketball, and hockey have given rise to a collective identity among millions of predominantly male fans in the United States, Europe, and around the rest of the world. They trace how these global—and globalizing—sports emerged from local pastimes in America, Britain, and Canada over the course of the twentieth century, and how regionalism continues to exert its divisive influence in new and potentially explosive ways. Markovits and Rensmann explore the complex interplay between the global and the local in sports today, demonstrating how sports have opened new avenues for dialogue and shared interest internationally even as they reinforce old antagonisms and create new ones. Gaming the World reveals the pervasive influence of sports on our daily lives, making all of us citizens of an increasingly cosmopolitan world while affirming our local, regional, and national identities.

This book examines Japan’s Heisei era through the lens of the crisis in Japanese professional baseball of 2004, challenging the narrative of decline which dominates the discourse on the period. The story of this crisis reveals much about the Japanese psyche during the “Lost Decade,” about the nature of change during Heisei Japan and of the nation’s resilience. The business of professional baseball provides crucial insights as it achieved its basic form at the same time as Japan's post-war political economy, and shared many characteristics with it, including systemic inefficiencies which post “bubble” Japan could no longer sustain. The book traces how the crisis unfolded and the cast of characters who appeared during it (including team owners, players, IT entrepreneurs, and ordinary fans) revealing much about the push and pull of continuity and change in Japan. Featuring an in-depth analysis or the key participants and developments of the crisis in baseball this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of sports management, Japanese history, and Japanese culture, particularly of the Heisei era.

This book considers how to locate America in the sporting world and howAmerican Sport should reflect the vast networks of expertise, finance, and performance moving out from American athletic body as well as the influx of talent coming from abroad.

The vast changes in family life have often been blamed for declining morality and unhappy children. Drawing upon pioneering research with the children of the gender revolution, Kathleen Gerson reveals that it is not a lack of family values, but rigid social and economic forces that make it difficult to live out those values. The Unfinished Revolution makes clear recommendations for a new flexibility at work and at home that benefits families, encourages a thriving economy, and helps women and men integrate love and work.

It’s difficult to imagine today—when the Super Bowl has virtually become a national holiday and the National Football League is the country’s dominant sports entity—but pro football was once a ramshackle afterthought on the margins of the American sports landscape. In the span of a single generation in postwar America, the game charted an extraordinary rise in popularity, becoming a smartly managed, keenly marketed sports entertainment colossus whose action is ideally suited to television and whose sensibilities perfectly fit the modern age. America’s Game traces pro football’s grand transformation, from the World War II years, when the NFL was fighting for its very existence, to the turbulent 1980s and 1990s, when labor disputes and off-field scandals shook the game to its core, and up to the sport’s present-day preeminence. A thoroughly entertaining account of the entire universe of professional football, from locker room to boardroom, from playing field to press box, this is an essential book for any fan of America’s favorite sport.

Discover how African-American professionals can combine their personal strengths with the wisdom of others to plant the seeds of a positive, lasting legacy in the workplace. Randal Pinkett was the first African-American winner on The Apprentice. When he won, he also became the only contestant to be asked to share his victory with a white woman. For generations, African-Americans have been told that they need to work twice as hard as everyone else to succeed. However, as millions of black Americans were reminded by Pinkett's experience, sometimes hard work is not enough. Black Faces in White Places is about "the game", the competitive world in which we all live and work. The book offers 10 revolutionary strategies for playing, mastering, and changing the game for the current generation, while undertaking a wholesale redefinition of the rules for those who will follow. In this book, you will: Expand yourself beyond your comfort zone Recognize and demonstrate the four facets of excellence Build beneficial relationships and powerful networks Identify different mentors and learn from others' experiences Discover ways of working with others to facilitate collective action Based on the authors' considerable experiences in business, in the public eye, and in the minority, the book shows how African-American professionals can (and must) think and act both entrepreneurially and "intrapreneurially". Black Faces in White Places not only explains shattering the old "glass ceiling” and changing the concept of success, but also examines the four dimensions of the contemporary black experience: identity, society, meritocracy, and opportunity.