The Hypocritical Mister Selig
| 10
|
by Dan Lewis
Bud Selig may have taken the podium at the close of this week's Winter Meetings. He may have addressed the press pool and given a choice interview to Ken Rosenthal or Peter Gammons. He may have spoken in private with Dodger or Yankee ownership. We don't know. Mr. Selig has been rather silent. Contrast that with eight years ago, when every two minutes, Bud Selig was taking the podium to discuss the dire economic straits some baseball teams were in. Or when he told Rosenthal -- then at the Sporting News -- that contraction and his creative enforcement of the "60/40 rule" was needed to maintain competitive balance. Or when he publicly admonished the Chicago White Sox for giving Albert Belle a hefty contract with built-in escalators while Selig was trying to cry poverty.
Selig's hypocrisy shows how morally bankrupt is arguments were in the late 1990s, and how the blame for threats of a 2002 players strike fall entirely on Selig's shoulder. Now that times are good, all the talk about contraction and salary caps have vanished into the Orwellian memory hole. The following transcript of Selig's remarks at the end of the Winter Meetings show that, in the end, the Players Association was right:
- NASHVILLE, TN -- Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball, took the podium late last night to address the state of baseball at the end of the Winter Meetings.
- "Last year, the Tampa Bay Rays -- then the Devil Rays -- had a team payroll of under $25 million, with Carl Crawford, Dan Wheeler, and Akinori Iwamura the only players earning over $1 million. The Florida Marlins, Washington Nationals, and Pittsburgh Pirates each came in at under $50 million. These four teams, combined, won 278 games and lost 370 games -- a winning percentage that comes out to a 93-loss season, on average," Selig didn't say.
- "Combined, these four teams had an estimated salary of approximately $130 million. Meanwhile, the World Champion Boston Red Sox approached $150 million," continued nobody. "And that does not include the $52 million paid to the Seibu Lions for Daisuke Matsuzaka."
- Selig went on, not saying that "it is a miracle that the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies were able to compete, given their relatively low salaries, and I think that underlies how incredible the Rockies late-season run was this year. But already, these teams are seeing an exodus of players from their ranks -- Kaz Matsui is leaving Colorado; Livan Hernandez will be departing Arizona. Meanwhile, Teams with payrolls in the stratosphere of the league, such as the Detroit Tigers and their $95 million-plus 2007 salary, are able to retain pricey free agents such as Ivan Rodriguez and his $13 million option, while acquiring stars such as Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera, previously the two best-paid Marlins." Comically, Selig did not point out, these two players "do not even crack the top five of the Tigers' salary chart."
- "It is evident that teams such as the Marlins, Rays, Pirates, and Nationals cannot compete in the current climate. Even if they double their salaries -- say, to the level of the Kansas City Royals and Cincinnati Reds -- they will fail to thrive without exceptional planning and luck. And if they do manage to compete," Selig did not observe, "it will be short lived. Take, for example, the Minnesota Twins and Oakland Athletics -- two teams which took on additional salary but failed to make the playoffs, and are now shopping their top players. Oh, and they have found a very, very hard time obtaining the funding for new ballparks."
- "As I said five years ago, and ten years before that during the unfortunate decision of the Players Association to go out on strike," Selig did not proclaim, "small-market baseball teams are in significant trouble. Yes, some of the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of our large-market owners, who fork over $36.2 million to an overweight center fielder who hit .222 last year; or spend $20 million to bring over some sushi-eating guy who claims to know how to pitch. But the TRUE culprit here is the players and the Players Association."
- Selig did not make the following argument: "The Players Association does not understand the delicate economic balance that I, Bud Selig, have created over the past decade-plus. Yes, MLB.com and MLB Advanced Media have turned the business of baseball into a $6 billion monster, but the fact that [Carl Pohlad and Jeffrey Loria] can wipe their butts with Ben Franklins is neither here nor there. The real issue is that, at some point, the out-of-control spending by baseball owners will exploded much like the sub-prime mortgage market has, and we will need someone to bail us out! And the Players Association must rise to the occasion and, right here and now, sign this 200 page document I had George Mitchell draft which creates a $75 dollar salary cap."
- "What's that?," Selig did not reply to a bemused reporter. "No, seventy-five dollars, not seventy-five million. Baseball is a game, people! These players should be willing to play for free! Three dollars a person is more than enough money. I can find people on every streetcorner in American who would gladly play for free. Just not, apparently, in Tampa Bay or Pittsburgh."
- "That," Selig did not continue,"is why this 200 page document will contract the Rays and Pirates."
- "Any questions?," Selig did not ask the pool of reporters assembled. "Oh, wait -- one other thing. Coffee and danishes -- $2 each."
