Baseball Son: My Journey in the Family Business

Stepping from behind the shadows of his Hall of Fame grandfather and father, this baseball son charts his own extraordinary forty-plus-year career shaping the modern game.

The son and grandson of legendary Major League Baseball executives Lee and Larry MacPhail, Andy MacPhail joined the family business at the age of twenty-three with a temporary job in the Chicago Cubs’ rookie league—and quickly began to climb. At thirty-three, he became the youngest general manager in baseball history and built the underdog Minnesota Twins into World Series champions in 1987 and 1991. He navigated the corporate politics of the Tribune Company as Cubs CEO during the 1998 home run chase and the devastating five-outs-away heartbreak of 2003. He engineered structural turnarounds as the president of baseball operations for the Baltimore Orioles and the Philadelphia Phillies.

With trademark understatement, MacPhail recounts fascinating behind-the-scenes stories of his hire as Twins GM, of grappling with free agency and data analytics, of becoming the first baseball executive ever traded. He does not skirt the effects of nepotism: getting fired from his first job because of it, tapping connections he had made as a teenager, and recognizing that “your last name could not rescue you from a bad performance.” Written with the sharp wit of a seasoned professional balanced by the grounded perspective of a family man, this memoir reveals the emotional toll of a relentless game even while celebrating the cultural relevancy of America’s pastime.