The Reshaping of America’’s Game: Major League Baseball After the Players’’ Strike

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.

Bryan Soderholm-Difatte is a former senior analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center. He is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research and a regular contributor to The Baseball Research Journal. He is the author of The Golden Era of Major League Baseball: A Time of Transition and Integration (R&L, 2015), America’s Game: A History of Major League Baseball through World War II (R&L, 2017), and Tumultuous Times in America’s Game: From Jackie Robinson’s Breakthrough to the War over Free Agency (2019).