The Sports Curmudgeon

I read that the baseball owners were about to hold one of their meetings – the one where they will find yet another reason to postpone deciding where to put the Montreal Expos – about now. And one of the agenda items at that meeting is a motion to offer Bud Selig a three-year extension on his contract through to sometime in 2009. My first reaction was “Why?” But upon reflection, I began to think this was a smart move on the part of the baseball owners; and that, in and of itself, may be the biggest newsflash of the month. They don’t do very many smart things.

In the past, I have not always been kind to Mr. Selig; on more than a few occasions, I have referred to him as Butt Selig and wondered aloud what species of mammal provided the pelt that seems to rest on his head. I’m not going to try to argue that he is brilliant or anywhere near perfect in his actions, but when I think about it, he ain’t nearly as bad as the reputation he has. And maybe the reason for that is that his reputation comes from sportswriters and journalists who don’t like rich owners of sports franchises all that much.

How do you measure the competence and value of a sports commissioner? I don’t think you do it by some agglomeration of seat of the pants criteria that come to mind only when you read that he did something you really don’t like. Here’s what I think is a reasonable way to do it. You compare what Selig has done to what the commissioners of the other major sports have done in similar economic times and you compare what Selig has done to what his predecessors as MLB Commissioner did in their tenures of office. That’s why I say Bud Selig is a good commissioner – not the greatest of all time in any sport, but also not the bumbling incompetent boob he is usually made out to be.

First, let’s look at the commissioners in the other major sports. Paul Tagliabue presides over the gold standard of a pro league. There is huge fan interest; seemingly unending revenue streams, huge TV exposure and TV rights fees and labor peace. Everyone – and I mean everyone – is making money in that business. All Tags has to do is to find a way to keep Al Davis from suing every person and corporate entity on the planet and the NFL does just fine. Selig does not have baseball near that state of affairs but baseball popularity is on the upswing.

David Stern presides over the sport that we were told was the boom sport of the 1990s when really it was the sport that Michael Jordan carried through the 1990s. Fan interest is down; TV ratings are down; televised games are buried on cable networks; attendance was down in over half the cities last season; the last labor impasse had to be ended with a threat to cancel the entire season unless there was an agreement by a fixed time and date. Baseball is in better shape than the NBA these days; face it.

Gary Bettman took over the NHL when the league was floundering; and in his efforts to resuscitate interest and financial viability, he has put the NHL on life support. They lost their TV deal and now have the same one that the Arena League has with NBC. If you don’t think Bud Selig has done a better job than Gary Bettman has done, you are dumb enough to moon a werewolf.

So, what happens if you compare Selig to his predecessors as MLB Commissioner? I don’t think he comes out looking bad at all and he is certainly not a horse’s ass. Selig took over for Fay Vincent in 1992; in truth, he was part of the owners’ cabal to get rid of Vincent and he became the “interim Commissioner” who seems to have morphed into “Commissioner for Life”. In 1992, baseball was not in great shape; the labor situation was boiling and the players went out on strike in August 1994 ostensibly to prevent the owners from locking them out in the winter. The World Series was canceled in 1994 – something that two World Wars were not able to accomplish – and the next season began in haste after a late settlement. The players’ strike and the hastily concocted deal solved nothing. Fans were angry; attendance dropped; TV ratings were in the tank; people started writing things like, “The world has passed baseball by.”

Ten years later, the game is in good shape and another prolonged strike by the players was avoided. Is the game perfectly healthy? Of course not. The cloud of steroids hangs over the game; the Yankees still outspend some teams by a factor of five every year; contraction is still an idea whose time needs to come. But baseball is better in 2004 than it was in 1992. You can’t give all the credit to Bud Selig, but you have to allow that he had something to do with it all.

So what exactly did Fay Vincent and his pal Bart Giamatti accomplish in their tenure running the game for about 5 years? They banned Pete Rose from baseball. Can you think of anything else they did that redounded to the greater glory of the game? I can’t. Bart Giamatti’s baseball poetry was lyrically lame at its best; Fay Vincent was merely a feckless goof who always looked to me like he had just come from having an enema. To say this pair of human meat lockers were anything more than placeholders in the history of baseball would be to put them on a pedestal neither deserves.

Before they “ran the game”, we had Peter Uberroth as the man in charge. Here are the two words that describe his legacy to baseball:

Collusion … conspiracy

Not only did he and his owner pals collude to keep free agent salaries unnaturally low by refusing to have any competitive bidding, they were dumb enough to put the plans in writing and to let those plans fall into the “wrong hands”. It merely cost the owners a $300M judgment in court. That is right up there in the ranks of stupidity with Nixon not destroying all the tapes and Peter Uberroth was the main man at the time.

Another of Selig’s predecessors was Bowie Kuhn whose major accomplishment seems to have been refusing to allow Charlie Finley to sell off his star players when he know he would not be able to keep them in free agency. That had a lasting effect, didn’t it? Now, teams have to trade minor league “prospects” to get their “rent-a-players”; that enhances the integrity of the game, right?

Other people occupied the commissioner’s office who were non-entities, but the hallmark of the position is always held out to be Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis. Usually, sports people say his name in some kind of hushed tone of reverence. He was there to restore the faith in baseball after the Black Sox scandal in 1919. And he certainly did that which has to make him a critically important figure in the history of baseball. But let’s not forget that Landis might also have had some feet of clay. Please recall that Joe Jackson – who continues to be banned from baseball today – was exonerated in a court with regard to fixing games and taking bribes to influence their outcome. And there is more that just a hint of evidence that baseball might have been integrated about 10 years earlier than it was except for the fact that Landis was not the most racially tolerant person on the planet at the time. I’m not here to condemn Landis; I merely suggest that his great accomplishment was balanced with some negative activities also.

So look at what has happened in baseball during Bud Selig’s tenure:

Expansion, realignment, unbalanced schedules and three division formats and 8-team playoffs. The expansion part is not so great, but the rest of the stuff is positive. I’d prefer a balanced schedule, but that is not an issue I’ll fall on my sword over.

Interleague play. The purists don’t like it but the fans do and attendance figures prove it.

Increased revenue sharing leading to greater parity. The revenue sharing is imperfect and seems not to apply to a few teams, but there is greater parity in the last three years.

World Series cancellation. That was at least as much the fault of the Players Association as it was of the Commissioner’s Office. Remember, the players walked out; they were not thrown out.

Using the forbidden word - - “contraction”. Hey, it had to be said because it was a good idea then and is a good idea now.

Ending the All-Star Game in a tie. Please get over this. The All-Star Game is an exhibition game; it does not matter. Continuing to focus on that event is about as important as studying the history – so you can chart the future – of urban yodeling in the US.

Maybe it’s time to put Bud Selig’s time in office in a more global perspective and try to overcome the knee-jerk reaction that he is an ignorant bumpkin whenever he does something. I’m going to try to do that. But it will be a lot harder to get over the feeling I have that he dresses himself in a dark closet with no mirrors.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…