MANFRED AT FAULT?
Commissioner has continually damaged Major League Baseball’s brand and game
It might be time to blame the commissioner for MLB’s standoff.
This is not all Rob Manfred’s fault.
I repeat: This is not all Rob Manfred’s fault.
It just increasingly looks and feels like it is.
Maybe that’s why every time I click on a tweet about another non-update update in Major League’s Baseball’s coronavirus-induced labor war, a staggering amount of replies strongly insist that Manfred should immediately resign. Or be fired.
Even with basketball’s recent public conversations about the pros and cons of bubble life in Orlando, Fla., Manfred would love to be NBA commissioner Adam Silver right now. Heck,
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell — hip, cool, relatable and openminded — suddenly looks like the new ideal.
But Manfred is the commissioner of MLB. And if you’ve been paying attention to the “news” surrounding MLB for more than a month, you already know the painfully obvious.
MLB entered the weekend still blowing its golden opportunity.
MLB, yet again, can’t get out of its own way.
MLB — its billionaire owners and multimillionaire players — has been inexplicably out of touch during three months of American chaos: coronavirus pandemic, national economy in freefall, peaceful protests and riots, the troubling return of the virus.
July 4 will come and go in the United States with empty stadiums and without baseball. And while history keeps rapidly changing in 2020, it’s increasingly safe to say that history — sports and national — will not look back kindly upon Manfred’s reign during this year.
“We’re going to play baseball in 2020. One hundred percent,” Manfred told MLB Network on Wednesday.
The only problem with that proclamation?
As of Saturday evening, there was still no agreement between the billionaires (MLB owners) and multi-millionaires (players), and Manfred’s words again appeared hollow to millions of infuriated baseball fans across the country.
He’s still a long way from Bud Selig territory. But since the 2019 season ended, Manfred has continually damaged MLB’s brand, the sport and the game.
The 2017 World Series champions were investigated for cheating. The investigation was a mess, Astros owner Jim Crane came down harder on his organization than Manfred, and the beginning of spring training for the 2020 season was devoted to fans and the media ripping MLB’s commissioner for letting the Astros’ players off the hook.
“We can all agree that we’ve gotten enough facts out there that plenty of people have made their judgments as to what went on,” Manfred said in February. “Once you have a situation in which the 2017 World Series will always be looked at as something different, whether or not you put an asterisk or ask for the trophy back, I don’t think it makes that much difference.”
He could not have been more wrong.
The 2018 World Series champions were investigated for cheating. The investigation was a total mess and lasted far too long. In the end, someone named J.T. Watkins was blamed for everything. Fans and the media ripped MLB’s commissioner for letting the Boston Red Sox off the hook.
“I’m a precedent guy,”
Manfred said in February, while the chaos from the Astros fallout was peaking. “I’m not saying you always follow precedent, but I think you ought to start by looking back at the way things have been done. You have to have a really good reason to depart from that precedent.”
Precedent, eh?
Hopefully Selig’s replacement has been studying 1994. And 1998. And 2007.
The strike that canceled a season and World Series.
A record-breaking home-run chase that captivated a nation. A chase that was a steroid-fueled farce the entire time and will be relived Sunday night via the “30 for 30” documentary “Long Gone Summer” on ESPN.
The still-damning Mitchell Report.
After all that and so much more, we still kept coming back to baseball. The beauty. The history. The simplicity.
Nothing is beautiful or simple right now. Two of the last three World Series champions intentionally cheated and now MLB is the last loser standing, coldly bickering over hundreds of millions of dollars while everyday working Americans worry about … everything.
Saturday brought two news breaks that only made Manfred’s side look worse. A 2017 letter from Manfred to the New York Yankees that could detail more serious sign stealing than previously reported must be unsealed, a federal judge ordered. MLB also reached an agreement on a new billion-dollar TV package with Turner Sports, according to the New York Post.
But the lowest blow for Manfred and MLB arrived Saturday night when the MLB Players Association said that negotiations were effectively over. Now, an insulting 50-game season could be the best-case scenario.
The TV deal doesn’t kick in immediately. But with some MLB owners whining that baseball barely makes any money, receiving a billion-dollar promise during the middle of a labor war only hurts MLB’s fight. Manfred also clearly glossed over the initial sign-stealing scandal involving the Red Sox and Yankees in 2017 — so much for the power of precedent — setting up the nasty cheating storms that followed.
I want to like Manfred. He’s impressive in person. Intelligent, polished, articulate, commanding.
But MLB couldn’t look worse right now and MLB only has MLB to blame.
Owners look selfish and greedy. Players look selfish and greedy. The commissioner is clearly struggling with unity during a time when unity is the only thing that is going to get us through everything.
Silver already would have created a compromise.
Goodell never would have let it get this far.
The PGA, MLS, MMA, NASCAR and IndyCar are back. The NBA and NHL are set to return. The NFL, king of the sports world, remains on track and strongly backed its players during a period of racial unrest.
MLB has spent more than a month fighting over how much money each side is going to get, during the same year that two World Series champions effectively received asterisks.
The longer this farce goes on, the more this is Manfred’s fault.