Last week, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) announced the 2018 recipients of the Henry Chadwick Award, established to honor the game’s great researchers—historians, statisticians, annalists, and archivists—for their invaluable contributions to making baseball the game that links America’s present with its past. From the award’s beginning, the University of Nebraska Press is proud to have an author receive this outstanding award every year.

Four researchers received this honor, including Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College and a leading voice in the field of sports economics. His 1992 book Baseball and Billions was a groundbreaking look at money in all aspects of the major and minor leagues. He followed that up with more than twenty other books, including the paperback edition of In the Best Interests of Baseball? Governing the National Pastime (Nebraska, 2013).

The book is a thoughtful, balanced look at the impact of the ninth commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, on the sport as well as an examination of the commissioner’s position in a historical context. Zimbalist asks: can any commissioner act in the best interest of the game?

The Boston Globe said “[Zimbalist] gets right to the heart of the game’s survival at the organizational level.”

Originally published in 2007, Nebraska’s second edition includes a new preface and epilogue by the author discussing the developments in the baseball industry since 2005 and anticipating what lies ahead for the national pastime.

For a complete list of Chadwick Award winners, click here.

Congratulations, Andrew!