We will give Bud Selig this: His 21-years as Commissioner of Major League Baseball have been free of all pretenses. He early and often made it clear that he would not serve as a genuine, true-to-the-title Commissioner.
A man who would ceaselessly and firmly serve the best interests of The Game — everyone’s best interests — more easily could be found waiting for a bus or a royal flush.
From his start, Selig demonstrated that the only best interests worth serving were those of his enablers — the teams’ owners. And the only serviceable interests they demanded is that he pad their bottom lines or, for the newer owners, service their inflated buy-in debt.
To that exclusive interest, Selig was a superstar.
That he’s retiring after next season presents team owners with the opportunity to select someone with Selig’s sense of selective, tapered allegiance and commitment. Both the idea and ideal of a Commissioner who would grant The Game and its fans any loftier regard than disregard is now out of the question.
Selig met the terms of his $15 million per engagement. The next Commissioner will be expected to toe the same mark.
There’s so much to choose from as representative of Selig’s negligent tenure. That there still is an on-going drugs scandal that Selig’s money-first mandate helped cause and sustain — his absurd claims to have pulled The Game from the PED abyss, to the contrary — is the most onerous and obvious.
But he also is responsible, at least in title, for the standardization of the illogical, the unfriendly and even the misanthropic. The ripped-off fan became the common fan; the sucker MLB’s best customer.
Consider that on Selig’s watch the three-hour rain delay was introduced then systematized. Same with fabricated “convenience fee” and other tack-on ticket charges. A real Commissioner would have protected Baseball’s customers from such victimization.
For the just plain illogical, Selig allowed Eastern Time Zone Sunday games to begin on — and to be changed to — 8:05 p.m. That’s now the traditional starting times of Sunday Yankees-Red Sox games.
That the games’ tickets were sold as 1 p. m. starts didn’t matter. That many were sold as family and kids’ promotional afternoon games didn’t matter. That busloads of fans had purchased tickets, months in advance, for faraway community excursions — ticket purchases suddenly rendered useless — didn’t matter.
That kids had school the next morning and parents had work? Didn’t matter. That the games often ended after midnight? Didn’t matter. Hell, it didn’t even matter if people — baseball fans — watched these games or had, naturally, fallen asleep.
What mattered was TV money, ESPN’s money.
Selig approved interleague baseball, framing it as a “gift to the fans,” then allowed team owners to whack up the cost of those games’ tickets. Interleague play, now quickly and inevitably played out, always was a gift to the owners.
Even after Barry Bonds was exposed as a BALCO cheat — and after Selig began to reinvent himself as a drug-sniffing police hound — he allowed teams to jack up ticket prices when Bonds hit town.
Selig even sold four seasons of MLB openers — once traditionally played in Cincinnati, home to MLB’s oldest team— to companies in Japan. First pitch from Tokyo on ESPN, 4:30 a.m.
And he had the colossal gall to claim that he personally checked ticket pricing at new Yankee Stadium to find that the media had exaggerated the truth, insisting that the tickets are “affordable.” He couldn’t see — or didn’t care— that all those thousands of up-close seats would go empty, postseason, too, because of their obscene pricing?
But it never was Bud Selig’s job to see. He was assigned to sell Baseball’s soul — its good name and good faith — to the highest bidder. And he did a fabulous job of that.
And the next Commissioner, I fully suspect, won’t be hired to be the Commissioner, but to be the next Bud Selig.
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If both NBC and NFL Network regard Mark Mayock as a strong, engaging football analyst, how must those networks regard us?
Thursday, throughout 49ers-Rams, Mayock again seemed eager to cause anxiety attacks among viewers. No play, no matter how self-evident — a batted-down pass, a short run— could escape his whistle-to-next-snap “I,” “me” and “my” inspections, dissections and reflections.
In the first quarter, Niners DT Justin Smith was flagged for grabbing the facemask of QB Sam Bradford as he was throwing.
“If you’re going to face-mask anybody,” said Mayock, “it shouldn’t be the quarterback.”
But the quarterback was Smith’s target, the only player, during that play, Smith would reach out to grab!
And Mayock’s still hitting us with this “getting the football to athletes in space” stuff, as if “throwing to an open man” doesn’t cut it. How many non-athletes are NFL pass receivers?”
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Fascinating, how those who don’t regularly call Yankee games see Yankee games better than those who regularly call Yankee games.
Wednesday, when Robinson Cano took his stylish time making the throw to first on the back end of an attempted 6-4-3 — the batter was safe — Rays’ TV man Brian Anderson said that whomever signs Cano (for a fortune) for next year will have to indulge that kind of effort.
Of course, on YES, Michael Kay and Ken Singleton didn’t see it that way. Although Yankees fans, likely recognizing Cano’s cavalier play, could be heard booing, Singleton praised the hitter, Wil Myers, for “getting down the line.”
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Mariano Rivera’s extended pre-retirement days have unfortunately — but unsurprisingly — come attached to the sell of all things Mariano, as if he’s an everything-must-go closeout sale or undergoing liquidation.
WFAN’s Craig Carton is not yet secure enough as a conversationalist to no longer have to rely on “hot babe” talk and vulgarities to get over? Or are morning-drive hosts bound by a go-low code?
Now ex-Jet and recently fired — for public misconduct — ESPN analyst Hugh Douglas has been arrested, charged with beating and choking his girlfriend. But ESPN has a gift for hiring bad risks. That’s ESPN’s way of “pimping its cool.”
Friday, Mike “Let’s Be Honest” Francesa got into an argument with a caller, shouted over him, then cut him off the line — while, as per his norm, continued to shout at him and demand answers of him — as if he silenced him with the brilliance of his response.