Play Ball!
With Opening Day close at hand, we heartily recommend Jane Leavy’s 2025 Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It, a rip-roaring good read, even if you only have a passing interest in our nation’s pastime. Leavy, a veteran sportswriter, weaves together savvy insights, memorable interviews with baseball cognoscenti, and charming anecdotes drawn from the many years she has covered the game. And while she may never get to be the baseball commissioner, those in charge of overseeing the sport would do well to consider her recommendations for addressing key issues that are plaguing MLB and for simply keeping the game fun to watch.
The quotation in this week’s puzzle comes from a portion of Leavy’s book that walks the lay reader through the explosive growth in the type and quantity of baseball statistics in recent times. Like many, she has mixed feelings about the role that sabermetrics is having on the way that baseball is played and managed these days. And she’s not above poking fun at some of the nerdy analysis that has crept into the sport, as the quotation makes clear.
Given the subject matter, we felt it imperative to include a reference to “Moneyball,” the iconic 2011 movie based on Michael Lewis’s 2003 book of the same name. The movie and the book chronicle the 2002 season of the Oakland A’s, in which the General Manager, Billy Beane, used advanced analytics and data-driven strategies to produce a division-winning team with an excellent 103-59 record, despite a severely constrained budget.
We snuck in a variety of other baseball-themed clues and answers as well, as is our wont. How many did you see? Did any of the clues particularly strike your fancy?
If you’re into baseball stats, or even if you just like watching Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill talk about such stuff, you might enjoy this clip: