A week ago, the largest newspaper in Minnesota called on Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to resign, a desire echoed by U.S. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. Commentators aren't merely critiquing Selig's leadership but consciously ridiculing his demeanor of assertive haplessness.
It would seem the honeymoon is over for Selig. One wonders what took so long.
The answer, naturally, is that Selig is the guy the other owners want in that office. And that's one of many reasons, though it's the main reason, for the mess baseball is today. If a kind word might be offered about Selig's management style, he has been quite effective at finding consensus and pressing it into action. But that works only on issues that reveal consensus.
Some issues will never inspire consensus and, in those cases, someone has to make a decision. Despite a fairly recent decree of Selig's "sweeping powers," however, he can't make owners in wealthy markets agree to level the competition for clubs in smaller markets. So, as market disparity is the definitive issue in the team sports business, Selig is, essentially, powerless.
In other sports leagues, the commissioner is a true, independent and superior agent for the interests of the game. Team owners allow commissioners the powers of a CEO by volition, if not by statute, believing a strong executive makes for a strong league, which enhances the value of every franchise. By allowing a strong executive to unify them, team owners in those sports have been much more successful in their labor negotiations.
But baseball owners decided in 1992 that they didn't want to put up with a strong commissioner or the players union. So they moved to overthrow Fay Vincent for refusing to go along with their master plan to destroy the union, then installed one of their own, Selig, on an interim basis that lasted more than five years before finally making it official in 1998.
Selig's first bold move was to lead his brethren in a foolish gambit to force a players strike during the 1994 season, prompting cancellation of the World Series. Only under court order did baseball resume in 1995. By then, public outrage assured a slow recovery. Rather than allow the game and its habits to bring people back, Selig pandered to the skittish consumer with the introduction of interleague play and a game based almost entirely on the home run.
Finally, in 2001, average game attendance began to flirt with pre-strike levels and television ratings for the World Series brought the good news that people were watching. But the process is never too far from the product in baseball, so the World Series couldn't pass without reminder about the looming offseason.
If Selig had just kept it simple, these would be difficult months for the game. Ownership's labor agreement with the players expired at the end of the season, and no one figured the negotiations would go smoothly. Owners wanted the players to cooperate on revenue sharing, like the players unions in other sports. But baseball players feigned no interest in changing a system that's nearly quadrupled its average salary in 10 years.
So Selig fired his shot heard around the world, after aiming squarely at his own foot. The truly amazing aspect of his plan to contract two clubs isn't simply his unmitigated gall but his failure to assess the risk of damage. It's as if his vision were entirely funneled at how the announcement would play as a negotiating tactic with the players association, leaving him with no sense of the world outside baseball's labor conflict.
While threatening the players with a reduction of jobs, Selig also picked a picked a knock-down, drag-out fight with the people of Minnesota.
The fallout from the contraction announcement has damaged Selig's credibility in ways that were untouched by the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. A Minnesota judge issued an injunction requiring the Minnesota Twins, a leading candidate for contraction, to play the 2002 season in the Metrodome. The much ridiculed governor of Minnesota, a bombastic former professional wrestler elected by his stage name of Jesse Ventura, has positioned himself as a plain speaker of truth just by questioning Selig's competence. In retaliation for the Twins' possible contraction, Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone and Conyers undertook to examine baseball's treasured anti-trust exemption.
Selig's ensuing performance before the House Judiciary Committee included artful financial statements to the effect that 25 of 30 clubs were losing money. Sensible observers said that if the clubs were really losing money, they could help themselves by paying less for players. Under questioning, Selig was evasive and incredulous. Conyers had to remind Selig he was under oath.
Furthermore, Selig's rhetorical strategy, as always, demonstrated an obstinate disregard for any reasonable assessment of the evidence that conflicted with his story. He'll make some absurd remark, his counterpart will point out that it's absurd and Selig will accuse his counterpart of being absurd or preposterous, without addressing the point at issue.
Irritated by Selig's wall of evasion, Conyers launched an investigation of baseball's finances from his office. Others, particularly the Minnesota newspapers, conducted their own research. Now every move Selig makes is ruthlessly examined for its integrity, and more of those moves are being revealed.
In their particulars, the various loans recently discovered among businesses owned by club owners might actually be harmless. Selig, long-time owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, borrowed $3 million from a company owned by the family of Twins owner Carl Pohlad and paid it back within 60 days. A business owned by Colorado Rockies owner Jerry McMorris took out a loan from a lending company owned by Pohlad. Those who connected the dots drew their own conclusions, with the understanding that Selig supports Pohlad's desire to fold the Twins at a better price than he can get for selling them and that McMorris first proposed contraction.
Baseball rules forbid clubs from "directly or indirectly" lending money to each other unless the other owners endorse the transaction. But the rules are selectively enforced, and that rule didn't anticipate a world in which banks would increasingly consolidate or in which some club owners would be major international bankers. McMorris said the rule is "arcane."
And it might well be. But even if there were no such rule, these transactions would appear no less to create conflicts of interest.
The real appearance of impropriety lies not in these various deals but in the disposition Selig has portrayed by his conduct of the offseason. He's made himself unbelievable simply by making unbelievable statements. So, in matters that require public trust or benefit of the doubt, he is shot.
Selig's contraction ploy, widely suspected as a favor to Pohlad, still is hung up in the Minnesota Court of Appeals. The attorney general in Massachusetts is investigating whether Selig unduly influenced the recent sale of the Boston Red Sox, veering the deal away from the highest offer and toward a group including Florida Marlins owner John Henry, thereby short-changing the charitable trust that sold the club.
With Henry in Boston, the Marlins would be available to Montreal Expos owner Jeffrey Loria. It's said Selig is at work on facilitating the deal, which would leave the Expos to be operated by baseball for easy disposability.
Following Selig's remarkable congressional performance, Conyers expressed a desire to bring him back for a serious attempt to explain baseball finances. But the chairman of the judiciary committee, F. James Sensenbrenner, refuses to call another hearing. It might not be entirely coincidental that Sensenbrenner is a Wisconsin Republican.
Though Selig isn't really the problem, he is uniquely qualified to make the problem worse. Though he placed the Brewers in a trust and the club now is operated by his daughter, Selig can't evade the perception that he's a club owner who thinks he serves the interests of the game by serving the interests of club owners. That's exactly the kind of commissioner baseball doesn't need and has never needed.
Simply replacing Selig won't solve the problems. Baseball club owners would be wise to change the role as well as the person who fills it.
Again, though, we're back to the wisdom of club owners. And that's never been a good sign.
