Commissioner Rob Manfred and his predecessor Bud Selig are unlikely to be thrilled with a book that is scheduled for publication Aug. 28.

Although “Baseball Cop” by Eddie Dominguez has been embargoed until its release, some details are disclosed in a description of the book obtained by a former major league umpire, who forwarded it to me. More about the book’s disclosures will follow after the book’s release:

“In the wake of 2005’s sometimes contentious, sometimes comical congressional hearings on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball and the subsequent Mitchell Report, Major League Baseball established the Department of Investigations (DOI). An internal and autonomous unit, it was created to not only eliminate the use of steroids, but also to rid baseball of any other illegal, unsavory, or unethical activities. The DOI would investigate the dark side of the national pastime-gambling, age and identity fraud, human trafficking, cover-ups, and more-with the singular purpose of cleaning up the game.

Eduardo Dominguez Jr. was a founding member of that first DOI team, leaving a stellar career with the Boston Police Department to join four other “supercops”-a group that included a 9/11 hero, a mob-buster, and narcotics experts-keeping watch over Major League Baseball. A decorated detective as well as a member of an FBI task force, Dominguez was initially reluctant to leave his law-enforcement career to work full-time in baseball. He had already seen the game’s underbelly when he worked as a resident security agent (RSA) for the Boston Red Sox in 1999 and become wary of the game’s commitment to any kind of reform. Only at the persuasion of a widely respected NYPD detective tapped to lead the DOI did Dominguez agree to join the unit, which was the first-and last-of its kind in major American sports.

“’We could clean up this game,’” his new boss promised. In Baseball Cop, Dominguez shares the shocking revelations he confronted every day for six years with the DOI and nine as an RSA. He shines a light on the inner workings of the commissioner’s office and the complicity of baseball’s bosses in dealing with the misdeeds compromising the integrity of the game. Dominguez details the investigations and the obstacles-from the Biogenesis scandal to the perilous trafficking of Cuban players now populating the game to the theft of prospects’ signing bonuses by buscones, street agents, and even clubs’ employees. He further reveals how the mandates of former senator George Mitchell’s report were modified or ignored altogether. Bracing and eye-opening, Baseball Cop is a wake-up call for anyone concerned about America’s national pastime.”

This description of the book was presumably written by the publisher, Hatchette Books, and could be exaggerated to entice baseball fans to buy the book. But I suspect there’s a lot of reality in the book, and I’m willing to wait for its publication to find out.

I have been suspicious of M.L.B.’s desire to rid the game of performance-enhancing drugs since a conversation I had with Selig about Mark McGwire after the slugging first baseman had been found to be using androstenedione. It was legal at the time, but it was a steroids precursor.

No, Selig said, he didn’t plan to do anything. “I like Mark,” the commissioner said. “I’m not going to do anything to hurt him.”

Does that sound like a commissioner who wanted to rid his game of performance-enhancing drugs?

And although Selig was brow beaten by a Congressional committee into employing a former United States senator, George Mitchell, to investigate drugs in baseball, he paid thousands of dollars and praised a report that included information that came primarily from two investigations that had been conducted by law enforcement officials and very little original investigative discovery by Mitchell’s men.

Five years ago I wrote in this space:

“Selig has long claimed he didn’t know players were using steroids and said no one came to him complaining about steroids use. He also blames the players’ union for delaying implementation of a drug-testing program. In a brief telephone interview Friday he angrily rejected any suggestion that he had been guilty of tardily dealing with the issue.”

The publicity notice for “Baseball Cop” seems to suggest that Selig and his successor, Manfred, weren’t tardy in dealing with steroids but were willfully blind.

YANKS-SOX: HERE WE GO AGAIN

When the Yankees completed a doubleheader sweep of the woeful Orioles Saturday night, they were 7 games behind the Red Sox, putting them half-a-game ahead of the position they were in at the same time 40 years ago when they were on their way to overcoming a 14-game deficit.

I recognize 40 years is a long time, and maybe it’s time to forget the past. But it’s hard to forget anything involving the Yankees and Red Sox. Their rivalry is one of the great things about baseball. There were years when one team or the other or both were not competitive, and life in their division was pretty dull. Now we have five weeks to see if the Yankees can catch the Red Sox as their ancestors did in 1978. Having that prologue just makes the present more intriguing.

BASEBALL’S CANCER CURSE STRIKES MCCAIN

John McCain, the honorable United States senator from Arizona, wasn’t a baseball man as far as I know, but his death last Saturday put him in exclusive baseball club. It’s not one its members want to belong to, but the choice isn’t theirs.

McCain died of a malignant brain tumor, glioblastoma, and it’s one that has killed a seemingly high number of baseball players in recent years:

Dick Howser, Johnny Oates, Dan Quisenberry, Ken Brett, Tug McGraw, John Vukovich, Bobby Murcer, Gary Carter, Darren Daulton, Union chief Michael Weiner and Jeanine Duncan, wife of celebrated pitching coach Dave Duncan, have all died of glioblastoma, the deadliest brain tumor. Chris Duncan, the Duncans’ son and a former major league outfielder, also has been diagnosed with glioblastoma, and five months ago took a leave of absence from his St. Louis radio sports show.

Sadly, baseball’s glioblastoma brigade has acquired a growing political counterpart. Exactly nine years before McCain died, Senator Ted Kennedy died of glioblastoma, and in between their deaths, Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden and former attorney general of Delaware, died of glioblastoma.

When the Detroit Tigers made a trade at the winter meetings many years ago, their modest manager, Sparky Anderson, proudly proclaimed, “I just got smarter.” When the Tigers acquired a pitcher, Doyle Alexander, Aug. 12, 1987, Anderson had no clue how much smarter he had just become. Alexander started 11 games for the Tigers and won nine, pitching three shutouts. The Tigers also won the other two. In those 11 games, Alexander registered a 1.58 earned run average. The Tigers accomplished what they wanted when the traded for the right-hander. They won the American League East championship.

Will Cole Hamels be this year’s Doyle Alexander? Or maybe it will be J.A. Happ. What about Lance Lynn? And let’s not forget Nathan Eovaldi.

All four of those pitchers were acquired in the last month in the annual game of roster resurrection, in which teams with high-priced players they don’t plan to re-sign trade them to contending teams willing to give up promising youngsters for the rare chance to go to and win the World Series. Few of the moves accomplish the trading teams’ goal. Sometimes the results are mixed.

The 1987 Tigers won the division title with Alexander’s remarkable assistance but lost the World Series to Minnesota and a future Hall of Famer, John Smoltz, the prospect, to the Braves.

The Smoltz outcome was rare, very rare, and stands out for its rarity. Another unusual development occurred more recently and provided a different twist. Two years ago the Cubs sought an established closer and offered the Yankees a package of four young players for Aroldis Chapman, whom the Yankees had acquired seven months earlier from Cincinnati.

Chapman pitched in eight post-season games for the Cubs, including Game 7, in which he was the winning pitcher in the game that brought the Cubs their first World Series championship since 1908.

Chapman did not remain with the Cubs for long. He became a free agent after the season and rejoined the Yankees six weeks later. He also produced a bonus for them. The player package the Cubs offered for Chapman included Gleyber Torres, who has become the Yankees’ second baseman this season.

When the season reaches the time for roster resurrection, pitchers usually are the primary target, but they are not miracle workers. Only sometimes. Like Alexander. Last season the Yankees acquired two starting pitchers and were not rewarded favorably for their efforts.

Sonny Gray compiled a 4-7 record with a 3.72 earned run average in 11 starts, and Jaimie Garcia turned in an 0-3 record and 4.82 e.r.a. in 8 starts. This year’s newcomers have made a better start.

Happ, who has experienced his fourth trade in the past nine Julys, started his fourth game for the Yankees Sunday against Toronto, one of his former teams, and raised his Yankees’ record to 4-0 with a 2.21 e.r.a.

The best post-trade record a year ago was Justin Verlander’s 5-0, 1.06 e.r.a; for Houston.

Lynn, Happ’s new teammate, emerged with a 1-0 record and 2.61 e.r.a. from his first three starts and a relief appearance with the Yankees.

Happ has been a good, if not great, post-trade pitcher, running up records of 5-4 with Houston in 2010, 3-2 with Toronto in ’12 and 7-2 with a 1.85 e.r.a. with Pittsburgh in ’15.

The way the Boston Red Sox have played this entire season they don’t seem to need a July cavalry, but they obtained Eovaldi nevertheless, and he produced a 2-0 record and a 1.99 e.r.a. in his first four starts.

Then there is Hamels, who excited the Cubs with a 3-0 record and 0.72 e.r.a. in his first four starts. Nobody should be surprised. After he was traded to Texas in July 2015, Hamels registered a 7-1 record and 3.66 e.r.a. in 12 starts.

Aside from Alexander, though, there is only one pitcher who stands out in my mind for his post-July trade performance. The Cleveland Indians traded CC Sabathia to the Milwaukee Brewers July 7, 2008. He started 17 games for the Brewers and compiled an 11-2 record with a 1.65 e.r.a. He carried the Brewers to the post-season, where they lost to Philadelphia in the division series four games to one

HERNANDEZ TALKS 1.000

Unless I missed it, Keith Hernandez has not apologized for comments he made on a game broadcast last week about a Miami pitcher hitting a hot Atlanta hitter with a pitch. Good for Hernandez. Baseball has gone soft enough without muzzling a broadcaster and former player from discussing an issue he knows intimately well.

“They’re killing you,” Hernandez said, referring to Braves rookie Ronald Acuna Jr. “You lost three games. He’s hit three home runs. You got to hit him. I’m sorry, people aren’t going to like that. You know, you got to hit him, knock him down. I mean, seriously knock him down if you don’t hit him. You never throw at anybody’s head or neck. You hit him in the back. You hit him in the fanny.”

Hernandez’s comments provoked a torrent of criticism from fans and even media members. But he was right. That’s the way baseball has always been played, and the age of timidity shouldn’t change it.

Too much has already changed. Catcher Buster Posey is run over at the plate, and suddenly baserunners have to avoid running into catchers. Chase Utley roughly takes out an infielder at second base, and that old-time effort is banned.

Those new-age rules remind me of a softball league I played in years ago. Our third baseman got spiked – remember metal spikes? – by a sliding runner, and suddenly metal spikes were banned.

Batters are hit all the time, whether they’re hot or not. The late Don Baylor was hit 267 times in his career and never complained, just dropped his bat and took his base. Not all players are as strong and as tough as Baylor was so it wouldn’t surprise me if next off-season Commissioner Rob Manfred devises a rule about HPB.

It could mimic the intentional walk rule. If a team wants to hit a batter, signal the intent, and the runner goes to first without being imperiled by a 100-mile-an-hour fast ball.

DIFFERENT KEITH, DIFFERENT DISPUTE

After watching the latest Mets-Yankees game on ESPN and hearing and reading the reaction to Keith Olbermann’s appearance as play-by-play announcer, I was going to write about it. I was especially attracted by comments on Olbermann by Mike Francesca, a bombastic announcer I have never listened to but of whom a highly knowledgeable friend said he is too dumb to know what he doesn’t know.

I have never been an Olbermann fan, but I enjoyed the ESPN telecast, finding it more enjoyable than the usual Yankees telecasts. Olbermann was funny; Michael Kay is never funny. He is always too busy trying to polish the style he has adopted, which is objectionable enough to prompt listeners to mute the sound and simply watch the game.

Not to belabor the unappetizing issue, but the coincidence is too much to ignore. In last week’s column I wrote about readers’ reaction to the sports coverage of the once worthwhile and important New York Times. Within days, a reader sent me a notice the Times had posted online.

My former employer is seeking a new sports editor.

However, before readers of the Times sports section get excited, they need to know the Times is not booting the current sports editor, Jason Stallman, out the door because he prefers cupstacking to baseball. The newspaper’s editors feel Stallman has done such a good job they are promoting him into a more important job. It shows you what we know.

As the reader who forwarded the online job notice wrote, “By the way, the Times has a job listing for a new sports editor but the online job description continues to emphasize the world wide audience without one word about local sports.”

The Times has become so disdainful of local sports that the downtrodden Mets go uncovered by Times reporters. Even when they play in New York (so there is no travel expense), the Times gives its Mets’ fans reader a vanilla account of the game by the Associated Press.

The Yankees generally still get staff coverage – when they get coverage. On one of the days of the recent four-game series with the Red Sox, the game finished too late for the Times’ biggest press run so there was no mention of the Red Sox-Yankees in that edition. When I covered the Yankees, I had to write a story to cover that particular edition. We didn’t ignore the Yankees as if they didn’t play.

But Stallman obviously has no use for baseball so he sees no need to fill that hole before the game is over.

Baseball coverage, however, as the coverage of any sport, is not just about reporting scores. Covering a team requires steady surveillance. Reporters have to be around the team constantly. They have to talk to the manager and players. I can’t imagine how reporters would have survived in the late 1970s and early ‘80s if they weren’t at Yankee Stadium to cover Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner.

Here’s a more current reason for covering the Mets. They are having a terrible season under a rookie manager, Mickey Callaway. Their general manager, Sandy Alderson, has stepped down following recurrence of cancer. A three-headed front office team is doing his job.

Owner Fred Wilpon might say otherwise, but the Mets haven’t recovered from the devastating Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, which severely affected the ability of owners Wilpon and Saul Katz to spend money on players and other necessary elements that help produce a winning team.

The Mets need to make serious decisions, and Times readers know that. But the Times isn’t telling them anything to help them keep abreast of developments. As far as the Times is concerned, none of that matters, if it exists at all. Times readers may know that reality on their own, but they won’t learn anything from the Times. If the Mets were Manchester United or some other noted soccer team, the Times would be all over the story. The Mets? They may as well be the Brooklyn Cyclones.

I found out more about the Mets in the Sports Business Daily last week than the Times told me.

“Mets lean toward traditional GM hire after tumultuous ’18 campaign,” the headline read.

I’m not a fan of the New York Post, but the article quotes the Post as raising a possibility that is far more interesting than the Times’ silence on the matter.

Wilpon, the Daily quotes the Post, is “‘unlikely to hand the organization’s reins to a young, purely analytics-driven GM with whom he would perhaps have difficulty connecting,’ and the growing belief is Wilpon will ‘look toward a more traditional baseball person’ for the role, according to sources cited” by the Post.

Wilpon is also expected to “take a relatively conservative approach with the GM hire after the organization went with an ‘outside the box’ candidate at manager with Mickey Callaway last offseason.”

Some team officials believe the club “became too analytics driven in recent seasons under Sandy Alderson’s watch, and a veteran leader with a pure baseball background would help shift the organization toward the center.”

Alderson “took a medical leave in June” with a return unlikely, and the Mets have since been “guided by a three-headed panel” that consists of Assistant GM John Ricco and Special Assistants Omar Minaya and J.P. Ricciardi. Ricco “has not been eliminated as a possibility for the job.” However, sources said that the Mets are “more likely to hire an external candidate.”

The Alderson observation is sound because when he ran the Oakland A’s in the 1980s and ‘90s, his protégé was Billy Beane, who as Alderson’s successor became celebrated for the “money ball” era.

But the Times hasn’t felt it necessary to inform its readers of any of this and will very likely play “catch up” when the Mets announce the identity of a new general manager. Mets fans, meanwhile, have to seek news of the Mets elsewhere.

BUT CAN WE PUT BASEBALL IN THE PAPER?

Not wanting to force readers of this site elsewhere, I provide you with the Times post of its search for a sports editor. You apply at your own risk:

Job Description

Sports Editor

From the World Cup to the Olympics to LeBron James’s long and winding road, New York Times readers are captivated by sports coverage. The primary task of the next Sports editor will be to ensure that Times coverage is central to the sports conversation, whether it’s soccer in Europe, free agency in the N.B.A. or corruption at the Olympics. The Sports desk has become an engine of innovation for the newsroom and the next Sports editor must keep that digital momentum. The editor should lead a desk that breaks news, delivers memorable features, lands major investigations and introduces many new readers around the world to Times journalism.

Candidates should be able to:

• Present a vision for Sports coverage in an increasingly international and digital New York Times.
• Conceptualize and execute ambitious investigative projects.
• Work closely with graphics editors and other visual journalists to produce visually innovative work.
• Motivate and nurture the careers of journalists of all experience levels.

This is an excluded position.

The New York Times is committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce, one that reflects the varied global community we serve. Our journalism and the products we build in the service of that journalism greatly benefit from a range of perspectives, which can only come from diversity of all types, across our ranks, at all levels of the organization. Achieving true diversity and inclusion is the right thing to do. It is also the smart thing for our business. So we strongly encourage women, veterans, people with disabilities, people of color and gender nonconforming candidates to apply.

If you are an active employee at The New York Times or any affiliates, please do not apply here. Go to the Career Worklet on your Workday home page and View “Find Internal Jobs”. Thank you!

HE GETS PROMOTED

In a separate memo, the top three Times editors, led by executive editor Dean Baquet, issued a memo to the Times staff explaining the development that made a new sports editor necessary:

After interviewing many, many candidates for what one applicant called “the most exciting project in journalism today,” we are thrilled to announce the first hires for our coming TV news show, “The Weekly.”

Our executive producer will be Mat Skene, an award-winning journalist who has just completed a Nieman fellowship after a long and successful run at Al Jazeera, where he created and oversaw “Fault Lines,” the investigative current affairs program. Mat’s show broke ground on major stories — Haiti, Ferguson, Trump’s travel ban — and pioneered a visceral style of on-the-ground reporting. His show won a pile of awards — two Peabody Awards, an Emmy, nine more Emmy nominations — but we tapped Mat to lead the show because of his journalistic curiosity, his track record as a leader, his passion for innovative storytelling and his ambition to create a new dimension in Times journalism. As executive producer, Mat will serve as the bridge between the Times newsroom and Left/Right, our production partner, and will be responsible for turning our signature reporting into can’t-miss television.

He will be joined by Jason Stallman, one of our most creative deskheads and a driving force in digital journalism. Jason will be leaving Sports to become the editor of “The Weekly,” where he will partner with journalists on every desk to determine what kinds of stories the show tells, and how we tell them. His relationships and credibility across the newsroom will be crucial in establishing the show as a premier outlet for our most ambitious work. Jason turned the Sports department into a laboratory of innovation and has been a pioneer in leading groundbreaking collaborations across desks, disciplines and continents. He’s a master at narrative – ask Sarah Lyall or John Branch — and a bulldog on news. (See concussions in the N.F.L.; Russian corruption at the Olympics; cheerleaders and #MeToo; a battery of FIFA scandals.)

All right, enough of that intramural boasting. If the Times were that good, it wouldn’t be struggling to come up with gimmicks to attract readers, viewers, call them what you want.

The reality is newspapers are dying. People don’t read them anymore. Young people don’t read anything. In the early days of this website, it briefly attracted younger readers who couldn’t get away from it fast enough.

I became certain there was an early warning system in which a 20-something reader would stumble on the site, see that it was 900 or 1,000 words that he would actually have to read and immediately send out an e-mail warning other 20-somethings, “Look out. He’s at it again.”

I was pleased that it didn’t take long for those viewers to abandon the new ship and not return, leaving the site to those who enjoyed reading about baseball. Now, though, we have to deal with the Jason Stallmans of the digital world.

I have a friend my age who has spent – and still spends – his life reading newspapers. He carries them under his arm wherever he goes. He used to be a baseball writer, a darn good one. What does this mean? Old baseball writers don’t die? They just keep reading newspapers?

SELIG ON BONDS: NO COMMENT

Last week MLB.com had a display noting that on that date Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s career home run record with No. 756. I don’t recognize Bonds as the holder of the career or single-season season home run record holder, but I was curious what Bud Selig thought of the MLB.com designation. Selig was Aaron’s No. 1 fan, and he had no use for Bonds.

To find out, I sent an e-mail to Selig’s spokesman, Rich Levin, MLB’s former media relations director.

“He is not talking about this or most other baseball subjects,” Levin replied, “now that he is well into retirement.”