MLB boss makes fans long for the old days
Manfred claims to love baseball, but all he cares about is cash, says John Feinstein.
During his almost quarter-century as commissioner of Major League Baseball, Bud Selig was frequently attacked, mocked and criticized for both his actions and inactions. Selig was far from perfect, and often came across as the car salesman he once had been.
But for all of Selig's flaws, his love of the sport was always apparent. At times, he would get almost misty-eyed talking about the game, and loved to walk through the press box almost every night when he owned the Milwaukee Brewers to “talk ball” with the writers.
Almost six years into Rob Manfred's tenure as his successor, such passion for the game is sorely missed. Manfred publicly referred to the World Series trophy as “a piece of metal” while defending his unconscionable handling of the Houston Astros' sign-stealing debacle.
The year 2020 has been difficult for everyone — in sports and in the world. But Manfred hasn't gotten anything right, and his comments this week offered more proof of how little he understands or cares about the game.
Manfred, who makes US$11 million a year with annual raises built into his contract through 2024, understands one thing: money. He claims to love baseball, but everything he wants to do — including keeping the expanded playoff format and starting extra innings with a runner on second beyond this strange season — seems aimed at making more money for the owners.
Manfred came into office in January 2015 vowing to fix the game's pace-of-play problem. When games got a little bit faster — actually dropping to three hours per game for nine-inning games in 2018 — Manfred acted as if he had discovered fire.
The euphoria didn't last. The average game time hit a new high this season for nine-inning games: 3 hours 7 minutes. Manfred, who can put in a pitch clock without the approval of the players' union, has wavered on the issue for three years.
The minute it became apparent this season was going to have to be played in empty stadiums, Manfred and the owners began moaning about their losses, even though the game has never been healthier financially than in recent seasons. New contracts with regional television networks have lined the owners' pockets and attendance has been strong.
On March 26, the owners, with Manfred as the lead negotiator, agreed to pay the players on a pro-rated basis for a shortened season. Two months later, they tried to renege on that deal.
June was an ugly, month-long back-and-forth between players and owners, fighting over money, as they have done so often in the past 50 years.
Ultimately, there was a 60-game regular season, and the owners made up a lot of their lost revenue by expanding the playoffs from 10 to 16 teams and adding a best-of-three first round. Because the schedule was so compressed, including many COVID-19 related postponements, doubleheaders consisted of seven-inning games, and extra innings in all games began with a runner on second base.
Under the circumstances, these changes were understandable.
But to consider extending them beyond the current situation ignores what makes baseball unique among major sports.
The regular season has more meaning than any other. It is long — 162 games — meaning one hot or cold streak doesn't decide a season. Plus, unlike in basketball and hockey, making the playoffs is difficult. This year, two sub-. 500 teams made the post-season, and one of them, the Houston Astros, came within a game of sullying the World Series.
Of course, Manfred had done that himself before the pandemic shutdown, when he refused to strip the Astros of their ill-gotten 2017 World Series championship. In the wake of the sign-stealing scandal, the team was fined $5 million (or the cost of a backup second baseman), and general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch were suspended for 2020 before getting fired. No players were punished because they had been granted immunity to get them to tell the truth.
Now he's pushing to expand the post-season on a permanent basis. How many teams, Rob? Sixteen? Twenty-four?
He also is considering continuing the ridiculous runner on second base rule in extra innings. Is this Little League?
It's enough to make real baseball fans miss Selig. For all of his flaws, it was clear he loved the same sport they did.