When Bud Selig came through town the other day backfiring like a rusty old Buick though a quiet neighborhood, I braced myself for what he might say half hoping he’d signal some disquiet over the recent discrimination lawsuit filed against our excellent COO Jeffrey Scott Wilpon, but there was nothing of the sort. No reservations, no concern, nothing.
“I monitor everything closely, but that’s employment litigation.” Selig croaked. “There were a lot of charges there. Jeff denies them vigorously. I think in this particular case, they’re going to court, and we’re just going to have to see how it plays out. “
I was going to respond initially with some choice barbs for Mr. Bud but I decided to spare my audience the profanity laden vituperation … Sometimes it’s better to let things settle a while.
My feelings on the subject ranged from irritation to rage to disbelief. The scene from the Lord of the Rings where Treebeard discovers that Saruman has been cutting his trees comes to mind. “A wizard should know better!” Indeed.
An 80 year old father and grandfather of two daughters and five granddaughters should know better. He could have at least thrown in, “we are very concerned about these serious allegations,” just for good merit, but no, nothing. You hope the subject doesn’t come up at the Selig Thanksgiving Day table for Bud’s sake … might get awkward … particularly as one of his daughters, Wendy Selig-Prieb, was a baseball executive herself with the Brewers.
Some of us are lucky, lucky enough to be in professions where we work more or less unencumbered by the meddling interference of antediluvian dolts. Unfortunately blockheads and imbeciles abound in our society and the hope is that organizations serving the public interest, organizations purporting to be “social institutions,” set appropriate standards to eliminate or at least mitigate the reach and influence of said dullards. That’s the hope. Doesn’t always turn out that way though. Sometimes you are confronted with rampant nepotism and institutional bias. Sometimes you have to deal with overt discrimination, ignorance, and hostility. Sometimes you have to deal with the boss’s nitwit son.
Believe it or not I’m a fairly optimistic person. I like to try and look for the good in people even when I might be upset with them. It probably stems from my work in education. I’ve learned over the years that people, particularly kids, do so much better when you engage their kinder, gentler, positive sides, with praise and encouragement. What bothers me when I read about stories such as the one involving Jeff’s wrongdoings is the revelation that there were others present.
If any of these allegations are true, it boggles the mind that the token assemblage of yes-men in the room failed to raise a single perfunctory objection. Was there a brother, a father, a husband in the room who took exception to Jeff’s antics? And please, spare me the “none of this has been proven” retort, Jeff has enough of a track record to warrant skepticism even among his most strident supporters …. All three of them.
Maybe I’m naive. Maybe it all comes down to money. Maybe my inclination to close my briefcase walk out of the boardroom and turn in my resignation should such events confront me is why I’ve never been part of such a boardroom in the first place. No one wants to risk their livelihood or their salary – honor and integrity be damned.
And that’s where we come back full circle to Mr. Selig. I imagine Bud to be the sort of guy who would sell you a 2002 Crown Vic with a bad transmission, and then, if you tried to return it he’d point out that you purchased the vehicle “as is” …
“See,” he’d say looking down his spectacles. “Right there in the fine print.”
The Mets, according to Bud, “are doing things the right way.” They are building from within. They’re fortifying their farm, undermining the salary structure, driving costs down, and showing that you can in fact run a big market team on a shoestring budget and minimize losses (or widen your profit margin). The Mets have been exhibit A in Selig’s small-marketization campaign — the Seligification of MLB …
The Mets have also shown that even when your team’s owners become embroiled in the biggest Ponzi scheme in the nation’s history they will somehow come out of it with their ownership intact if they know the right people. Yippee! You’re out of luck Mets fans. You’re stuck with crappy owners and unfortunately there’s no lemon law in baseball.
What I think most Mets fans fail to grasp is that like the dynamic in any boardroom dominated by a powerful nincompoop, there are far too many among us who will sit idly by and compromise their integrity for a bigger bonus or a fatter check.
MLB owners love Selig in spite of his enabling during the steroid era, in spite of his double standard treatment of Frank McCourt relative to the Wilpons, in spite of his blatant misrepresentation “crying poverty” during contraction talks involving the Twins and Expos, in spite of his heavy handed and manipulative treatment of the Astros… In spite of all that, the owners sit around the boardroom in adoration of their glorious pockmarked monarch. Why? Because he’s helped them make obscene amounts of cash … and, I guess, that’s all that matters?
Honor and integrity be damned.
