The Pecan Park Eagle

With apologies to Patrick Lopez and all the other real artists of this world.

Do you ever wonder when Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is going to retire? Maybe most of these blurring of traditional lines between the American and National Leagues would have happened anyway, but I don’t know. Look at all that’s happened in that area in the years of Bud Selig’s “reign” as baseball’s chief executive:

(1) The two league offices and presidencies have been eliminated; (2) The individual league baseballs, once signed by the two now missing leagues presidents have been replaced by one ball that says “Major League Baseball”, signed by “Allan H. (that’s Bud) Selig; and (3) the consolidation of the two league umpiring groups into one MLB game officials group. – Now, with the forced movement of the Astros to the American League in 2013, MLB will have achieved an equal division of the two leagues into two 15-club units, making inter league play now both balanced and necessary to season game scheduling at the current pace without long dead spots for some teams of non play.

About the only difference that now remains is the absence of the “DH” rule in the now size-diminished National League. You have to wonder. How long can the NL hold out against the imposition of the DH rule. Unless I’m mistaken, the National League is now the only holdout in professional baseball against the use of the designated hitter.

Selig supporters give him credit for guiding baseball through the horrible 1994 strike and World Series lost black hole, but his adversaries are willing to give him much of the blame for it. Selig did preside over baseball’s current and ongoing introduction of the wild card and is widely credited by many for a 400 per cent increase in revenues from the time he took office. He also takes a lot of credit/blame for the handling of the steroids era and he was very definitely responsible for putting the heat on new owner Jim Crane to accept the Astros’ move to the American League as a condition of purchase of the franchise.

My larger least favorite move by Selig was his decision to juice interest in the All Star Game by awarding home field advantage in the World Series to the team representing the league that won the All Star Game earlier in the summer of the same season. To me, that was one of the dumbest, most displaced ideas that ever flowed out of any commissioner’s office. Who wants to see the Yankees or Red Sox getting home field advantage in the World Series because of a bloop game-winning single by a “have-to-to-pick-one-of-them” Kansas City Royals players in the bottom of the All Star Game 9th?

Selig was going to retire at the end of this year. Now the owners have extended his contract (over $14 million a year) through 1914 so he can make it past age 80 in office and work on to see the infusion of Houston into the American League and the new second wild card teams put into motion as part of post-season play.

Wonder what the owners will give Selig as a going away present? Maybe that will be the time the National League gets delivered to the land of the designated hitter.

Nothing personal, Mr. Selig, but as a baseball fan, I can’t help but wonder what you’re thinking. I can’t help wondering too because, apparently, whatever you are thinking comes pretty close to tomorrow’s baseball headline on what we are going to get.

This entry was posted on March 10, 2012 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.