2
2011
The Tyrannical Reign Of Bud Selig
An article by 
I wish the title could have read, “The Fall of the Selig Empire”, but alas I’ll still have to ride his reign out a little longer before such a post will make a joyful appearance. As most of you know by now, I’m no fan of baseball commissioner Bud Selig. I don’t like the way he operates one bit. He has his fingers in everything and knows every little thing that goes on in and around the game. But whenever things go awry he predictably feigns ignorance or naiveté and shrugs his shoulders claiming he knew nothing. Believe me… he knows everything.
The commissioners office was first created to keep ballplayers and baseball team owners honest. The commissioner was supposed to preserve the integrity of the game and protect it from the likes of the greedy sniveling owners who would drag into the abyss if it would mean more profits. The country and congress should have screamed bloody murder on the day team owners voted to ditch Selig’s interim tag and officially name him as MLB Commissioner.
His presence in the office meant only two things - the hell with the integrity of the game, and that the owners were back in control. Poor Kennesaw Mountain Landis must have done a 360 and a quadruple Axel in his grave.
I’ve already ranted plenty over the years on my thoughts about his botched handling of the steroids issue which he intentionally turned a blind eye to for the glory of homeruns and the dollars they translated to. Plus all the other ways he diluted the National Pastime, which can fill a list as long as the elevator ride to his penthouse.
Today, my beef is with the secretive $25 million dollar loan he made under the table to the Mets in November from his own discretionary fund. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he tried to conceal it, the bigger problem (at least to me) was that he stood there and listened to the Wilpons adamantly state that the Mets were on strong financial footing and that the Madoff Ponzi scheme would not effect the day to day operations of the Mets. He knew that there was no truth to what the Wilpons were saying, but he still allowed that assertion to permeate the Mets fanbase and feed the airwaves, knowing fully well that he had just tried to bail the Mets out of a huge financial jam. He also knew that they had already exhausted the $75 million dollar line of credit which is given to all 30 teams. If he were in charge of the country, a horrifying thought to say the least, Selig would have been impeached a long time ago.
If we had a real commissioner, a commissioner who wasn’t joined at the hip to all the owners and their deep pockets, all except the Wilpons whose pockets are not deep at all it now appears, do you think that would have happened?
And yet, Selig wasn’t too busy to butt his nose in and fine Red Sox owner John Henry $500,000 today for making a comment regarding MLB’s failed revenue sharing experiment. SI.com had the quote:
After the 2009 season, Henry said “seven chronically uncompetitive teams received more than $1 billion in revenue sharing” and he wondered, “who could think that was a good idea besides those clubs?”
Yes, that one truthful observation - and one so obvious to everyone, cost John Henry and his Boston franchise a half a million dollars. I guess Henry doesn’t belong to, or tee off at, the same Country Club as Selig and Wilpon.
Too bad for him.
Too bad for the Red Sox.
Too bad for baseball.
About the Author: Joe DeCaro
I'm a lifelong Mets fan who loves writing and talking about the Amazins' 24/7. From the Miracle in 1969 to the magic of 1986, and even the near misses in '73 and '00, I've experienced it all - the highs and the lows. I started Mets Merized Online in 2005 to feed my addiction. Follow me on Twitter @metsmerized.
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Two words, spot on!
two more ” we’re screwed!”
Well said, well written.
Unfortunatly Joe your definition of what the Commissioner is charged with doing is wrong.
The Commissioner is there to settle disputes between owmers not players. Thats why the position was created in the first place to mediate between the AL and the NL.
He also runs the business of the corporation which means he gets involved in player issues as a representative of the owners and since he is supposed to be an uninterested 3rd party he was deemed the best suited to hand out punishments for both owners and players since it was likely a team would not punish their own player effectively so they could still use them.
Unfortunatly they did assign a former owner to that position in Selig so most of his decisions are skewed in the owner’s favor.
And that is largely because of the many baseball strikes that they felt the commissioner was not representing the owners interests well enough.
As for the Mets loan the reason they would do that is because they do not want another Montreal Expos to happen. MLB actually took over that franchise and had to foot the bill for an uncompetitive team.
Oddly enough Omar managed them as frugally as anyone could have while still developing talent and too bad he could never do that with us because too many people would complain we were not big players in FA!
I am not a fan of Selig but I just can’t get hung up on him loaning $25M to the Mets especially when I don’t know if the other teams of mlb are aware of this or disapprove of such an action.
What I would really like to know is if this loan is unprecedented and of more importance do the other owners feel Selig overstepped his duties or even lied to the other owners by giving the Mets this loan?
Let me try to explain. Selig lent Wilpon the money from his MLB discretionary account and not the regular MLB accounts he is charged with overseeing. He can spend that money at his own discretion without having it go through a vote with other owners like the MLB accounts. He did nothing wrong and broke no rules. I think the problem being conveyed in this post was not the loan, but that he did not challenge the Wilpons when they publicly said they were not having any financial problems when he in fact knew they had plenty of problems. As for the other owners, if you search around you will see that at least 2-3 of them have already expressed some concern over the loan and whether it will ever get paid back.
Ahh thanks for that Howard. So it was a personal loan between Selig and the Wilpons and nothing to do with MLB. I was under the impression it was money from the commisioners office or something to that effect.
If that is the case then I really don’t care what other owners feel about what Selig does with his own money.
I can understand their concern as far the future of the Mets are involved but knowing now that the money was not mlb money I am not really concerned for their opinion on selig loaning them money.
The Commissioner was always a puppet of the owners. He was never suppsoed to be a nuetral 3rd party. Landis was first hired to investigate the Black Sox Scandal. Wait, let me rephrase that..he was there to trample on the players responsible.
Did he actually do anything about the economic situation that caused the scandal (ie owners cheating players out of money)? Hell, no.
Well said Donal. Landis was hand selected by the owners to protect the owners under the guise of protecting the integrity of the game. Now a man like Fay Vincent, who was all about the integrity of the game, was basically thrown out, although he technically resigned after the 18-9 no confidence vote.
A puppet…Well you know puppets well. The commish your older bro?… donal want a cracker…buddy want donal’s cracker….. chirp chirp…
What is with all the personal attacks?
If you disagree with what he said then state why you do?
Its OK. I’ve been ignoring Harry since he tried to accuse me of being a racist. I’m about done with his sock puppet iz as well.
Glad to see you back and at it Joe, my only comment is on the financial stability of the Mets and the line that was fed to fans and all that the team was on solid ground.
Just another item to add to the “soiled” legacy of Bud: canceled WS, winner of AS game gets home field advantage in WS, not holding the badly managed teams accountable for the revenue sharing they receive, etc, sheesh when will this man get it.