Today marked a historic day in the history of Major League Baseball. It was one that was celebrated with a really cool little video where a baseball rolls into a box, the box spins around, then the ball comes back out with a different name on it. That's because Bud Selig has officially turned over the commissioner reins to Rob Manfred.
Selig had been commissioner for so long that I don't even remember Baseball without him in charge. Fay Vincent banned Pete Rose for life, then was promptly fired by the owners and Selig took over. And so it remained for 20 years.
Say what you want about Selig, but there's no denying the impact he had on the game. He, of course, has his critics and he made his share of mistakes over 20 years. That's bound to happen when someone holds such a powerful position for so long. But it's also safe to say that history will judge Bud Selig favorably. In fact, some might even say that Selig was the best commissioner in Major League Baseball history. I'm not 100 percent sure that I'd be willing to go that far, but I'd certainly agree that, at the very least, he belongs near the top. Because if you were to make a checklist and rank Selig's pluses against his minuses, you'd find a lot more pluses.
If you think about it, there are really only two big minuses that can go against Selig. The first is the All*Star Game tie in Milwaukee in 2002. He was embarrassed about that as anybody (especially since he used to be the Brewers' owner), and he promptly moved to make sure it would never happen again. Since 2003, the league that wins the All*Star Game will have home field advantage in the World Series. While some people were quick to write it off as a gimmick and still criticize it to this day, this has become accepted as a standard part of the All*Star Game. And it sure beats the old way, where World Series home field simply alternated between the leagues.
The other big knock against Selig is the Steroid Era. Isn't revisionist history a great thing? The Steroid Era happened. Everyone knows that. Everyone knew what was going on while it was happening. Yet no one wanted to do anything about it. It was convenient to turn a blind eye until the Mitchell Report and Jose Canseco made it impossible to. But, you know what? Bud Selig's not the only one to blame for the Steroid Era. Not even close.
And you know something else about the Steroid Era? As screwed up as this is going to sound, while it was going on and nobody cared, the Steroid Era was kind of a good thing. It's exactly what Baseball needed at the time. Fans were disillusioned with the game after the 1994-95 strike. The home runs brought them back.
Notice I don't include the strike as one of Selig's black marks. That was inevitably going to happen no matter who was commissioner. In fact, Selig was only the interim commissioner back then. Even if there was somebody in charge, the animosity between the players and the owners was so deep that there wasn't going to be a resolution without a work stoppage. But ever since then, Baseball's enjoyed an unprecedented era of labor peace. There hasn't been a single game missed because of labor issues since the players returned in 1995. Each of the other three leagues has had at least one lockout since then, including all three within a couple months of each other a few years ago. The lone exception? Major League Baseball. Major League Baseball, which famously had nine work stoppages from 1972 until the strike, has not endured a single work stoppage in 20 years. Bud Selig is a big reason for that.
Going back to the steroid thing, Baseball now has one of the strictest, most sophisticated drug testing programs in all of professional sports. First-time offenders have to miss half the season and, just like the rules of the game itself, it's three strikes, you're out. Biogenesis brought a boatload of suspensions without so much as a single positive test, and Alex Rodriguez got suspended for all of last season. None of that happens without the drug testing program that Selig engineered.
He's also helped the sport grow exponentially. The World Baseball Classic was his brainchild. The idea had been tossed about before, but Bud Selig was the one with enough clout to finally get an international tournament with all the best players from around the world, including Major Leaguers, off the ground and running. We've also seen teams open the season in Japan, Mexico and Australia, and games in Puerto Rico during Selig's tenure.
After the terrible idea that was contraction, Selig also brought baseball back to the nation's capital after 34 years. Montreal was the unfortunate casualty in all this, but it just seems right to have a baseball team in D.C. And that was just the tip of the realignment iceberg. Not one, but two teams, the Brewers and Astros, switched leagues, as we finally have an even distribution of 15 teams in each league. The Diamondbacks and Rays have also came into existence and new parks have popped up all over the place.
Under Selig, the playoffs expanded twice. The wild card was his idea and so was the second wild card. It seemed unnecessary and sounded like a bad idea at first, but, like most things Bud Selig wanted, it turned out being the best thing for Baseball. After all, Madison Bumgarner doesn't become a World Series legend if there isn't a Wild Card Game for him to win first.
As much as I don't like the home plate collision rule and some of the other changes he made, Selig hit a home run with instant replay. It was something that enough people were clamoring for that something had to be done, and it was implemented almost seamlessly. Despite some initial concerns, replay didn't slow the game down nearly as much as anyone thought, and everyone seemed to embrace the change that has become a part of the game after just one year.
But perhaps Selig's enduring legacy is interleague play. Say what you want about interleague play, it's been around since 1997 and isn't going anywhere anytime soon. If it wasn't here to stay, the Astros wouldn't have switched leagues and we wouldn't have year-round interleague play. Sure, we sometimes end up stuck with series like Twins-Rockies, but, interleague play has also given us Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox, Dodgers-Angels and the like in meaningful regular season games on a yearly basis. Interleague play is so much more than just a gimmick. It gives baseball fans everywhere the chance to see all of the game's best players, not just those on the teams they see all the time. And that's a good thing.
So, I choose to thank Bud Selig for his years of service to America's great game. Baseball is most definitely in a better place now than it was when Selig took over. I don't know what Selig's enduring legacy will be. But this much I do know. Rob Manfred has big shoes to fill.
No comments:
Post a Comment