The Atlantic Magazine – July/August 2023 issue: Mark Leibovich goes inside the MLB’s desperate effort to rescue America’s pastime from irrelevance

‘HELL WELCOMES ALL’

A graphic illustration of black, pixelated video-game characters on a red background.

Can hard-core gamers learn to play well with others? By Spencer Kornhaber

Playing a prerelease version of Diablo IV, the latest installment in a 26-year-old adventure series about battling the forces of hell, I faced swarms of demons that yowled and belched. My character, a sorcerer, shot them with lightning bolts, producing a jet-engine roar.

HOW BASEBALL SAVED ITSELF

Inside the desperate effort to rescue America’s pastime from irrelevance By Mark Leibovich

A photograph of a baseball outfielder on green field with fans silhouetted in the foreground.

Where in the name of human rain delays is Juan Soto?

The stud outfielder is late. Everyone keeps checking their phones—the antsy Major League Baseball officials, the San Diego Padres PR guy, the handful of reporters, and the assorted hangers-on you encounter around baseball clubhouses. Everyone is wondering when the Padres superstar will show up. He was supposed to be here half an hour ago, just after this baseball players’ sanctum opened and we were allowed to join them in their most elemental of baseball activities: waiting around.