Bud Selig’s legacy is that he guided baseball from a sport governed by “sportsmen” who even when The Strike hit the fans in August, 1994 still thought Messersmith-McNally and the Players Association could be dismissed to an entertainment industry/business. He was like George Herbert Walker Bush when he dealt with the leaders of the world, building consensus among men who never considered themselves partners in a greater business, but 30 individuals with 30 different agenda who considered “the best interest of the game” to be the best interest of each man’s team and economic interest.
The public that saw his uneasy public appearances never knew Bud the way so many of us knew him when he owned the Brewers, the man who wandered through the press box trading barbs and jokes and friendships. That world could never have made it in 2015, fine. He has a book to be written, but this tells more about Bud than anything else: no Brewer was a more loyal, battling union man than
B.J. Surhoff, but when Surhoff finally decided to leave the Brewers and sign as a free agent with the Orioles, he would not complete the deal until he had driven to Selig’s office and told him to his face. That tells you about all you need to know about Selig, and about a very good person named B.J. Surhoff.
On Labor Day, 1992, I was sailing on Buzzard’s Bay with my friend Tony Chamberlain when my cell (bulky then) rang and Selig gave me the heads-up that the change was coming. Fay Vincent was going to be out. That meant Selig would be in charge, interim Commissioner, for 22 years. It was windy, so Chamberlain couldn’t leave me at the Hospital Cove dock, so I jumped in and swam to shore with the understanding that once I showered and changed I’d get my cell. I called ESPN from my house land line and readied to do a live shot from a local hockey rink on the canal.
Not longafter, Selig said that one of the great problems facing the game’s future was the dichotomy between big and small markets. In the years of his commissionership, in which he had to deal with performance-enhancing drugs and many other side issues, Selig focused on revenue-sharing and giving everyone a chance. He focused on ballparks and venues. He focused on labor peace, avoiding a strike in 2002 simply because he knew that a strike after the cancellation of the World Series would be a serious wound.
This morning, look where his game stands going into the first year of the Rob Manfred administration: half the 30 teams have played in the post-season the last two seasons, while no team from New York, Chicago or Los Angeles has played in the World Series since 2009.
In fact, look at it this way. Detroit, which has the highest poverty rate of any major metropolitan area in Major League Baseball, has won the American League Central four straight seasons. Cleveland, which has the second highest poverty rate, made the playoffs in 2013 and went to the final weekend in 2014; the Tigers have an owner, Mike Ilitch, who would do anything for the people of Detroit, the Indians are one of the best-run organizations in the sport.
Of the nine smallest markets, seven have made the playoffs at least once in the last two years, with Pittsburgh and St. Louis making them twice. Milwaukee, the smallest market in MLB, led the NL Central much of last season, and made it to the NLCS in 2012.
On the other hand, teams from the first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh largest markets haven’t made the post-season the last two seasons.
Now, does this mean that everyone is playing with equal pocketbooks? Of course not. Performance, not revenues, determines too much of the access to talent, and when players like Yoan Moncada,
Jose Abreu and
Rusney Castillo get out of Cuba and reach the market, teams like the Indians, Pirates and Rays cannot to jump in with the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, etc. Can smaller markets rival the local media rights of the Dodgers? Of course not.
But revenue-sharing has unquestionably levelled the playing fields. And as Selig retires, the transition should be reasonably clean, at least until Rob Manfred has to deal with some major issue with Peter Angelos or another disgruntled owner.
Understand, Manfred,
Bob Bowman and Tony Petitti have played major roles in the MLB revenues that have been spread through the game in the Selig Administration. Manfred’s work with the Players Association has been reasoned and fair. His relationship with Michael Weiner was respectful and cooperative, his accomplishments in achieving drug-testing, re-arranging the draft and trying to make some sense of the international market has been exemplary, especially given the shifting parameters in those areas. Manfred has demonstrated the capacity to discuss decisions, not bully those who questioned him; in the suspension cases of
Mike Morse and
J.C. Romero, I raised objections, and Manfred’s response was to explain why he had to do what he did, admitting he understood and respected the objections. That will go a long way in the job he inherits.
What Bowman built in BAM is beyond anyone’s imagination. Petitti, with Tim Brosnan, built MLB Network to a significant and often creative force in a very short period of time. Few understand sports as entertainment better than Petitti, something baseball needs to address in the next three years.
Now, Manfred, Petitti and Bowman are given the task of moving the game forward in a complex, changing era in terms of demographics and the seemingly endless lenses through which customers view the game. In one row at one game one can see someone watching a Yankee game on his iPad, someone else checking FanGraphs and Pitch FX, someone else checking his At Bat App…Oh yes, all watching a game and debating the replays to see if a manager’s challenge could be upheld.
We talk of baseball’s Golden Era, some of which is steeped in nostalgia, some in the fact that from 1949 until the Cardinals beat the Yankees in the 1964 World Series, the game was New York centric. But American Cities, demographics and economics have changed radically, and this chart demonstrates how the sport has gone from urban to suburban or—especially in the case of St. Louis, which in the 21
st century has seen a dramatic urban deflation—regional business based on local television rights as much or more than attendance.
1960 is significant because it was the last season before the first expansion, because it was the last year before John F. Kennedy open the door to a revolution later known as “The Sixties,” and because it was third year baseball was played West of Kansas City, the seventh year since major league baseball was played West of the Mississippi River.
Oakland is a serious issue, one without a clear solution. Tampa Bay is also a serious issue, one that a move to Montreal won’t automatically solve. The Baltimore-Washington MASN deal is an issue that could send Angelos off in pursuit of legal revenge as he points to the fact that, in contrast with the Giants blockage of the Athletics moving to San Jose, he bailed baseball out of a ugly situation in Montreal with a regional television deal MLB agreed upon and now wants to redo, even if the metropolitan size of Washington is approximately double the size of Baltimore.
The Dodgers are clearly going to be a very different organization with whom to reckon with the hirings of Andrew Friedman, Farhan Zaidi, Josh Byrnes, et al. The Cubs are on the brink of longterm success.
Jerry Dipoto has stabilized the Angels. The Yankees are clearing contracts born from back pages hysteria, the Giants in 2017 will no longer be paying off the debt for their ballpark, the Mets in time will be free of the Madoff nightmare, even Miami is the 8
th ranked market in MLB.
In time, they may make competition more difficult for Pittsburgh, ranked 22 among the 26 markets. And Cincinnati, a smaller market than Portland, Oregon. And Kansas City and Milwaukee, each smaller than Sacramento.
What Manfred, Petitti and Bowman inherited from Selig is a business far more profitable, creative and diverse entertainment entity than it was in March, 1994, when there were replacement scabs roaming spring training, and it was a $1M industry begging the players to patch the divide between large and small markets by agreeing to a salary cap.
The cap never floated, and the strategy to implement a system failed in the courtroom of Sonia Sotomayor. Selig grabbed the leadership reins, and instead of players getting the 55% per cent of gross revenues that owners said was the line that had to be drawn, the players are averaging close to $4M a head and have 48% of gross revenues, while owners have their franchise values skyrocketing, their TV and BAM revenues escalating and there is enough revenue-sharing to make the two central divisions the most competitive in baseball.
Manfred, Petitti and Bowman are major contributors of where baseball is today, and they are not tied to the good ole days of the Fifties, they recognize that the three great faces of the game—
Giancarlo Stanton,
Mike Trout,
Clayton Kershaw—are not only spectacular players, but they are young and all exemplary people.
Given where they were twenty years ago today, another man other than Selig might not have gotten baseball where it is today. But it is time to stop ladling the past and center on the future, and the hands on the steering wheel may never have been better suited to deal with the winds and the ledges and the harbors that lay ahead.
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