Selig Must Go

Bud Selig’s feelings are hurt. So hurt, in fact, that His Disheveledness trotted off to Newsday to proclaim his complete innocence in the steroid scandal. To wit: “I don’t want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn’t care about it,” Selig said. “That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I’m sensitive to the criticism. The reason I’m so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we’ve come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.” ... “Starting in 1995, I tried to institute a steroid policy,” Selig said. “Needless to say, it was met with strong resistance. We were fought by the union every step of the way.” This is like Kenneth Lay coming out after the Enron scandal and blaming everything on Arthur Andersen. We all know how that turned out. But more on Selig’s union-busting in a minute. For the moment, let’s focus on Selig’s Pontius Pilate routine. As the owner of a team, and then commissioner of a league, I find this proclamation appalling, because he’s either lying through his Sanka-stained teeth, or he’s admitting being a bumbling, ignorant fool. At the risk of positing a false dichotomy, it seems to me that either Selig knew what was going on, and turned a blind eye, or he is almost criminally negligent in his role as baseball’s CEO. So which it is, Bud? Are you complicit or incompetent? Apparently, however, Bud conducted his own, independent investigation: “They all told me none of them ever saw it in the clubhouses and that their players never spoke about it,” Selig said. “[Padres CEO] Sandy Alderson, as good a baseball man as you’ll find, was convinced it was the bat. Others were convinced it was the ball. So a lot of people didn’t know.” Riiiiiiiiiiight. “So, I like, asked a few guys, you know, and they were all like ‘Naw, man, it must be the bat or the ball. Don’t know nothin’ about steroids man’, so, like, I’m pretty sure no one was taking them. And if anyone was, we were, like, totally in the dark.” So, let’s get this straight: you have the Commissioner of baseball, and the collective ownership of baseball either turning a blind eye to steroids and blaming the blatantly obvious and unnatural leap in the abilities of certain players, on the equipment, or you have a set of owners and a CEO who are so spectacularly incompetent at what they do that they knew nothing. Even supposing it was the equipment, how is admitting to knowing the equipment has been significantly altered and doing nothing about it a better excuse? What kind of fools does Bud take us for? Ye gods, man. So which is, Bud, et al? Are you all complicit, or are you incompetent? And then there’s Bud’s contention that the union fought him tooth and nail. I don’t doubt that for one, single minute. Donald Fehr and Gene Orza are as complicit in this whole steroids rigmarole as any one of the owners, and Bud himself. But I also think Bud has a vested interest in placing the union at the forefront of this thing: Bud Selig wants to break the union. When the CBA runs out in December of 2010, Bud will try and force a work stoppage and he will try to break the MLBPA. It should have come as no small surprise that as soon as the A-Rod test results were leaked that columns were already being written that pointed the finger at the union. Where some see faulty union leadership, I see Bud working behind the scenes to drive a wedge between MLBPA leadership and the rank-and-file membership. Bud wants a strike. He wants to break the union. Why, you might ask? Let’s let former commisioner Fay Vincent answer that question: The Union’s been very difficult. I think building a relationship with the Union, #4, would have been a huge priority. The Union basically doesn’t trust the Ownership because collusion was a $280 million theft by Selig and Reinsdorf of that money from the players. I mean, they rigged the signing of free agents. They got caught. They paid $280 million to the players. And I think that’s polluted labor relations in baseball ever since it happened. I think it’s the reason Fehr has no trust in Selig. And I think it’s one of the huge reasons I brought Steve Greenberg to baseball as the deputy. He’s now an investment banker. Everybody in baseball uses him, everybody loves him. But people forget that I brought him to baseball to help deal with Union because he was a former agent, he was well-liked by Fehr, and I think I was absolutely right. Indeed, I think that the firing of Steve by Major League Baseball was one of their huge mistakes. They should have kept him on. I think he should be Commissioner. I think he’s by far the most talented businessman in baseball. Let’s imagine you’re Donald Fehr and a man whom you dislike and distrust comes to you with an offer to “clean up the game,” only you know two things about him: one, that he’s been convicted as party to collusion, so his anti-player bonafides are solid, and, two, that he knew as well as anyone what was going on with steroids in baseball and could have cleaned it up any time he wished. Now, you reason, he just wants the spotlight. Now, you reason, he just wants to build his reputation as the commissioner that saved baseball by getting rid of that nasty union that harbored the steroid users, even though Selig himself, colluder and liar, had done just as much harboring during his years as owner of the Brewers and again during his tenure as commish. And then, this man, who you, Donald Fehr, inherently distrust, goes and fires the one man you do trust and can negotiate with. Would you make a deal with the devil? I’m not saying the union was right, but I am saying that I understand why they did what they did. And while two wrongs don’t make a right, and the union is just as guilty as the owners and the players, the union has good reason to completely distrust and offer from Bud Selig. Because Bud Selig, the most owner-friendly commish, ever, wants to saddle the players and the union with the whole thing. He wants to use steroids as the hammer with which he will crush the union. However, I would wager that when the full story of the steroid scandal is told, at its center, among the faces, with be the craggy, unkempt visage of one Allan Huber “Bud” Selig, Jr, the used car salesman who tried to kill the game. Bud Selig must go.