“Bud’s love for baseball and his gift for storytelling shines through every page of this tender and lively memoir which comes full circle when he is elected to the Hall of Fame. His description of the tension he endured while waiting for the call is pure Bud Selig—unpretentious, emotional, authentic.” - Doris Kearns Goodwin, extracted from the foreword of For the Good of the Game
The Wilson Center is thrilled to once again partner with Oconomowoc's Books & Company and Boswell Book Company! Join us on Thursday, July 11, as we present an evening with our 2018 EDDY Award winner, former owner and president of the Milwaukee Brewers and longtime commissioner of Major League Baseball Bud Selig, in an intimate conversation about his new book, For the Good of the Game: The Inside Story of the Surprising and Dramatic Transformation of Major League Baseball.
For more than a century, the game of baseball was resistant to change—owners, managers, players, fans all were against it. No one knew this better than Bud Selig, who, as the game’s ninth commissioner and the head of MLB for more than twenty years, brought about more change during his tenure than his eight predecessors combined. He ushered in some of the most important, and controversial, changes in the game’s history—modernizing a sport that that had remained virtually unchanged since the 1950s.
In this enlightening and controversial book, Selig goes inside the most difficult decisions and moments of his career, looking at how he worked to balance baseball’s storied history with the pressures of the twenty-first century to ensure its future. Part baseball story, part business saga, and part memoir, For the Good of the Game chronicles Selig’s career, takes fans inside locker rooms and board rooms, and offers an intimate and fascinating account of the process involved in transforming an American institution.
Featuring an all-star lineup of the biggest names from the past 40 years of baseball, Selig recalls the vital games, private moments, and tense conversations he’s shared with Hall of Fame players and managers and the contentious calls he’s made. He also speaks candidly about hot-button issues including the steroids scandal and the labor and economic issues that threatened to destroy the game.
For the Good of the Game allows readers to peer inside the clubhouse, and front offices, offering a one-of-a-kind glance into the transformation of the National Pastime. Complete with 16 pages of photos from Selig’s life and career in baseball, this provocative account from one of modern-day baseball’s most polarizing figures is sure to inspire debate among fans and create a national conversation about baseball.
About the Author: Bud Selig, the former President of the Milwaukee Brewers and the ninth Commissioner of Baseball, is a major supporter of his alma mater the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as Marquette University. He teaches a baseball history course at the University of Wisconsin and is also a lecturer in sports law at Marquette University and the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.