I misspent part of the Memorial Day weekend reading
"In The Best Interests of Baseball? by Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College whose specialty is the economics of professional sports.
Before getting to the current commissioner--whom the author, believe it or not, praises--Zimbalist recalls past lords of baseball: the imperious Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the miscast Happy Chandler, the overmatched Ford Frick, the clueless Spike Eckert, the starch-ass Bowie Kuhn, the tragic Bart Giamatti, the glad-handing Peter Ueberroth, the ill-starred Fay Vincent, and the interim-commissioner-for-life, Mr. Selig. Somehow, the national pastime has survived all of them.
Speaking of commissioners, it occurred to me that George W. Bush, the former managing partner of the Texas Rangers, thinks he's really the Commissioner of Baseball and not the President of the United States. That isn't as far-fetched as you think. Plenty of precedents from baseball history explain Bush's behavior in the Oval Office. I've got some illustrations, in Zimbalist's own words, beneath the fold Mendoza Line...
After baseball's 9/11, the Black Sox scandal, the opportunist Landis asked for--and got--dictatorial power as the game's commissioner. He told the owners:
It is fundamental that the Commissioner upon whom you devolve this authority and whom you trust and hold out to the millions of fans in this country with your plea, "Gentlemen trust this man he is our Commissioner." But he must have the power...
Landis also prevailed upon the owners to pass what amounted to a loyalty oath:
We, the undersigned. earnestly desirous of insuring to the public wholesome and high class baseball...hereby pledge ourselves loyally to support the Commissioner in his important and difficult task, and we assure him that each of us will acquiesce in his decisions even when we believe them mistaken and that we will not discredit the sport by public criticism of him and of one another.
Britney Spears couldn't have said it any better, especially since the words "fundamental," "devolve," "acquiesce," and "discredit"--to name just a few--would stump her.
George W. Bush would nod in assent if he heard Landis's views about dissent in wartime. After a federal jury convicted Big Bill Haywood and 15 other members of the IWW of sedition (Landis was a federal judge, and not a very good one), he said:
When the country is at peace it is a legal right of free speech to oppose going to war and to oppose preparation for war. But once war is declared that right ceases."
After another sedition case, this one involving Socialist Party leader Victor Berger, Landis told an American Legion post:
"It was my great disappointment to give Berger only 20 years in Leavenworth. I believe the law should have enabled me to have him lined up against the wall and shot."
Let's jump ahead 40 or so years to Ford Frick's regime. Frick was no Landis, but his tenure was the template for Bush's six years as governor of Texas:
By doing little, diverting his attention from wrongdoing, and defending baseball in Congress, Frick made few enemies among earn owners, with the exception of Bill Veeck. That was the key to his longevity in office.
One of Bush's owners is, of course, Kenny Boy Lay.
Next up was Spike Eckert, an Air Force general immediately dubbed "The Unknown Soldier" by one smart-aleck New York sportswriter (is there any other kind?). Eckert, like Bush, was totally unprepared for the challenges of his office:
Eckert knew little about baseball. At the announcement of his appointment, a reporter inquired when was the last time that the new commissioner had seen a game. Eckert allowed that he had been to a Dodgers game in Los Angeles a year or two earlier. On follow-up, it became apparent that Eckert did not know the Dodgers had previously played in Brooklyn. As the gaffes continued, baseball created a five-man cabinet of insiders to tutor Eckert.
It didn't seem to help.
Enemy combatants were the farthest thing from Bowie Kuhn's mind, but he showed the same high regard for due process in the Denny McLain case as Bush showed in the Padilla, Hamdi, and Yasul cases:
[B]ased on a story in Sports Illustrated, Kuhn suspended Tigers pitcher Denny McLain indefinitely for his alleged involvement with a Michigan gambling ring. Kuhn admitted he had no hard evidence but, his legal background notwithstanding, decided to suspend McLain while he conducted an investigation.
Kuhn did much the same when Oakland A's owner Charlie O. Finley staged a fire sale in an effort to get some value in exchange for those players who were about to become free agents:
The lack of precedent and of a rule prohibiting such transactions did not stop Kuhn. He didn't like Finley, and he didn't like the smell of the deal. Kuhn argued that he was protecting baseball's competitive balance, and his action was therefore in the best interests of baseball.
Peter Ueberroth (pronounced "Uber-rated") likewise brushed aside legal constraints:
After several players were revealed to be addicted to cocaine, in the spring of 1986 Ueberroth unilaterally ordered mandatory drug testing of all players four times a year. The players' union brought a grievance that such matters were subject to collective bargaining and won.
Unfortunately for Ueberroth, he had no way of stacking MLB's arbitration panel with toadies--as Bush has been doing with the federal judiciary.
After Uber-rated came Bart Giamatti, who held the post for only five months. But in his brief time in office, he convened the equivalent of a military tribunal to decide the fate of Pete Rose:
Giamatti had signed a letter on behalf of the convicted felon and bookie Ron Peters. Peters had provided very useful information to [MLB special counsel John] Dowd about Rose, and Dowd drafted a letter to the sentencing judge acknowledging Peters's constructive role. Dowd gave the letter to Giamatti for his signature, and the new commissioner obliged him. The problem was that the letter contained language that suggested Giamatti may have already been convinced of Rose's guilt.
It didn't take long for Fay Vincent, who inherited Giamatti's job, to run afoul of the owners. Before he departed, Vincent offered President Bush some pointers on how to deal with the possibility of impeachment:
Baseball's economic problems could not be fairly laid at Fay Vincent's feet. But this was not a court of justice; it was an owners' meeting. They passed a no-confidence-in-the-commissioner motion with a two-thirds margin (18 to 9). The owners presented this to Vincent, thinking that it would cause him to resign. But Vincent responded that the Major League Agreement prohibited any diminution of the commissioner's powers while in office. He claimed that dismissal was the ultimate diminution of his power and hence was a violation of the agreement.
Finally, we come to Bud Selig. His view on regulating business would warm a Bushie's heart:
After winning the 1997 World Series and failing to get public funds for a new stadium from Dade County or Miami, Wayne Huizenga traded away Moises Alou, Kevin Brown, Devon White, Jeff Conine, Al Leiter, Robb Nenn, Gary Sheffield, Bobby Bonilla, and Charles Johnson, all integral parts of the champion Florida Marlins. Huizenga thus lowered the Marlins' payroll from $53 million in 1997 to $19 million in 1998 and to $16 million in 1999.
Selig sat by and did nothing.
As owner of the Brewers, Selig not only bullied the state of Wisconsin to build him a stadium (as Bush and partners did with the city of Arlington, Texas), but also presided over baseball's own version of No Child Left Behind:
The new stadium that was supposed to undergird a competitive team opened in April 2001. But the Brewers only got worse in their new facility.....
Former governor Tommy Thompson, the U.S. secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services at the time, asserted, "The Brewers made it clear that if we built a modern, state-of-the-art stadium, it would provide them with the resources to field a winning baseball team....The Brewers need to put an end to the games. They need to invest in a winning team."
State senator Mike Ellis declared, "The Seligs just scammed the living dickens out of the people of this state." And Milwaukee mayor John Norquist bluntly stated, "The Brewers have an ownership problem."
Finally, another Selig anecdote evokes visions of Crawford, Texas, and Bush's "friends and family" approach to government:
[S]ome people claim that baseball has been too good to Bud Selig. Major League Baseball opened up handsome new offices for Selig in Milwaukee where he conducts most of his business. The New York staff and the team owners often have to make special trips to Milwaukee to meet with him. In 2005, MLB also opened up its Western office in Scottsdale, Arizona. When Bud sold the Brewers in January 2005, his son-in-law, Laurel Prieb, who had been working as a Brewers executive, was without a job. Major League Baseball announced the opening of its new office and that Laurel Prieb would run it. The Western office may have been needed and Laurel Prieb may have been the perfect person to fill the job, but for outsiders, at least, this move evoked some skepticism.
In his five-plus years as president, George W. Bush has done enormous damage to this country. Let's hope it's as resilient as Major League Baseball.