Introduction -- The uncooperative partners -- Starting down the road to eclipse -- Demographics -- The boys club-Eight men in a room -- The first expansion -- New blood, bad blood-ten men at a table -- Changing the guard -- The young Turks -- The luckiest city since Hiroshima -- The nadir -- The new guard-12 men at a table -- Expansion three -- Comeback and irrelevance

"The American League and the National League each have a storied baseball history. Both leagues had their share of problems, both suffering from organizational structures that offered few barriers to individual team owners acting purely in their own interests. But the American League in particular faced off the field struggles, in part of its own making, that lasted from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Stumbling around the Bases is the story of how the American League, even as the home of the mighty New York Yankees, fell into such a disastrous state, stumbling for decades to get out from its nadir, only to lose its separate status when the two leagues combined as one league like the NFL"--