Not to belittle the accomplishments of our venerated commissioner of baseball, but the news from Milwaukee –the Brewers are planning to erect a statue of Selig– is really disturbing.
First off, is there anyone who doubts that this idea could only have come from the team’s “owner,” who just happens to be his daughter. I mean, who else is gonna come up with a horrible idea like this? It certainly isn’t the fans, who have watched as the Selig family has gotten rich beyond their wildest dreams –mostly due to the tens of millions of dollars the team receives through revenue sharing, money that Selig has refused to spend on the team for as long as revenue sharing has been going on– and the increase in revenue due to a taxpayer-funded new ballpark.
Now there’s an accomplishment worthy of a statue, mooch millions upon millions of dollars off of the other teams in baseball, and off your fans and your local community, and then refuse invest in the team for decades.
But, besides some of these obvious issues, you put up statues for the great players in your franchise’s history, as opposed to filthy rich guys who charge ten dollars for a Miller Lite; the idea is off-putting for a variety of lesser concerns.
Selig’s legacy is stained by his complicity in the steroids issue. He cannot distance himself from what happened on his watch, whether you think it was a true scandal, or simply an overblown media creation. He was there, as commissioner, when Sosa and McGwire “saved” baseball, and there were people in his office that were whispering in his ear that there was a problem. He knew, and he did nothing, well, if by nothing, you mean, ignore the issue.
He’s handled several other issues rather poorly as well, don’t you think?
He tried to contract teams out of existence. That didn’t go so well, you might remember.
You could say I’m being unkind. OK, forget, for a moment, all of the things he did poorly. What has he done well?
Really, what has he accomplished that you could say is remarkable? What would you say is Bud Selig’s legacy?
Owners and players making lots of money?
Revenue sharing?
Inter-League play?
The Pete Rose fiasco? Yeah, he handled that one well.
How about shunning Bonds and McGwire for alleged PED use while standing behind David Ortiz? Yeah, very well though-out.
You do remember that he was the commissioner when the players went on strike, just about killing the game.
Oh, and he was commissioner when the owners colluded against the players, resulting in a hundreds of millions of dollars lawsuit that the league lost.
These are just a few of the reasons the idea is terrible. The most obvious one I haven’t even mentioned:
He’s still alive. His “legacy” could hardly be a known commodity, even now, towards the end of his career. You wanna honor the guy when he retires, throw a parade. Have a big dinner, and give him a car. A bronze statue? When he finally brings the team a championship you might want to consider a statue, maybe. It’s quite a bit early in the story of his life to build him a bronze statue.
Only in a sports town so bereft of real baseball heroes and champions could the idea of a statue of Seligula be given consideration.
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No, I don’t think the suits will have any idea.
Baseball Prospectus has published their PECOTA rankings and have projected the Giants will score 769 runs this season, or 112 more runs than they scored last year. That isn’t going to happen. But they have also projected the Giants finishing in 3rd place in the National League West with a .500 record, which is all too likely.
What? Unless everybody in the NL West moved their fences in 75 feet, I call bullshit.
These are the three guys getting replaced in the lineup
Winn age 35 OPS .671,
Lewis age 29, .738,
Ishikawa age 27 .716
These are the replacements. Apparently from an over-30 league:
Huff age 34 .694,
DeRosa, 35 .752
Sanchez 32, .742/.619 with the Giants at the end of last year
Huff managed to stink it up for both teams he played for last year. His line for the Tigers in the 40 games he played for them to close out the season?
A .189 Batting Average. .265 On Base Average. .302 Slugging Percentage. And an OPS of .567.
DeRosa is coming off wrist surgery. And like former Indian teammate Ryan Garko, DeRosa stunk it up royally (.696 ops and .291 OBA) for his new National League team after coming over in trade deadline deals.
Sanchez? I’m sick of talking about him. My comments about him can be found here.
Sanchez after literally limping over from the Pirates clubhouse on the day he was traded, managed to miss 35 of the last 58 Games the Giants played as Sabean made yet another horrible transaction in attempt to qualify the Giants for the post season. Remember this was the guy that Sabean traded his second best pitching prospect for. A guy who ops’d at .619 on the rare occasions he managed to roll off the gurney and onto the infield. And he’s going to open the season on the D/L. We are all going to be laughing our asses off if one Tim Alderson turns into even half the pitcher folks think he will be. Unfortunately for him, he is stuck with one of the few franchises that is worse off than the Giants.
So unless the rest of the NL West decides to hire high school pitchers for the season, I don’t see where anybody who is not on crack sees where the Giants are going to pick up another 112 runs. Either that or we see the re-emergence of one Victor Conte and the establishment of a chain of Balco vitamin stores on 3rd Street, I just don’t see this happening.
if the giants do finish with a 500 record…thereby losing more games than last season….think the suits will have the balls to fire sabean and pumpkin head?
Only if attendance falls again. It was virtually unchanged in 2008 and 2009 at 35,300 approximately. Before that, they were averaging 38 to 39 thousand and then they decided not to bring back Bonds. after 2007.
I doubt it will fall much as they can probably hang around .500 barring catastrophic injuries like last year’s Mets.
Another year of half a team.
It would be nice to be the first pidgeon to poop all over his statue.
I wonder if the Selig statue will depict him in a suit that fits him properly. It would be the first time in his entire disheveled grandpa life.
Will the statue depict Selig flipping off the patrons of baseball with one hand while clutching a huge wad of money in the other? Anything else would fail to fully convey his contribution to the sport.
Outstanding comment, Robert
I guess they are putting up a Letterman statue outside of Rockefeller Center too.
ot….but have you guys read that the nba is claiming they will lose 400 mil this season?
and i thought baseball clubs were the only ones who cooked the books
John, that column would be high comedy if it wasn’t sadly true. I guess it’s still high comedy – how ridiculous.
A commissioner matters (to the game) on the big things, the big issues. Yeah, he’s always a tool of the owners, but there’s supposed to be times when he rises above that, or, does what’s good for the game, which benefits everybody involved.
That’s where Selig has probably been the worst commissioner ever. All the same reasons that everyone has said, but also, even with the most cynical, self-serving, avaricious, capitalist viewpoint you can take, he bungled the whole PED issue so badly he ended up fucking everybody over. Selig’s a small-minded man; and for all his own faults, Judge Landis is rolling in his grave.
More Tim; Less Chris Please
Chris Lincecum, hovering father of Tim Lincecum just can’t stay away from the mikes and camera. Commenting outside of the arbitration room after flying to Florida with his son and son’s agent, he offered his dos centavos to Susan Slusser of the settlement.
“for the time being” … “It gives Timmy some security,
You know what “some security” “for the time being” is to most folks who come to watch your kid pitch Mr. Helicopter father? It’s 2 months of rent. Its being 2 car payments in front of the collection agency. Its 2 months worth of savings. Its having 2 months of sustainable income before they lose their house. And its maybe only losing half of their 20 years worth of investments in a 401(k) plan instead of 90 percent. Thats what “some security” is to folks who don’t try and make a living piggy-backing off their kids fame and fortune.
Why don’t you just “no-comment” instead of injecting yourself into the financial front end of your kid’s career. Just go back home and collect your allowance and shut the fuck up.
In the context of Major League Baseball, the $23 million, two year deal is modestly okay for a player of his stature, In comparison to Zito, it is a fucking pittance and an insult. From the perspective of a 3rd year player, it is phenomenal.
But for the average Giants fan, it is fucking 10 times more money than they can even dream about earning in their entire lifetime, so when you use the term “some security for the time being” to describe a series of checks totalling $23million before the kids 29th birthday, you sure don’t help the image of baseball worth a shit.
People don’t give a shit if Simon Cowell gets paid $50 million per year to insult talentless reality-show wannabes. But they sure as fuck don’t think $23 million is but a token sense of security for a 25 year old kid. In a baseball sense, yes. In a real world sense, no.
Idiot. Stick to pitching mechanics, and keep your thoughtless thoughts out of the media. Just shut up. Don’t say anything.
ok….so the man is good at creating a phenom….not so good at talking to reporters
i suggest he watch bull durham for some pointers
btw, his comments dont bother me any
timmy is well worth the money for the entertainment value he brings…which is tons more than cowell, slightly less than howard stern
Yeah. Most of the time stuff like that doesn’t bother me either, but sometimes the omnipresent craig james, butt-insky type of parents gets to me. The only parents I’ve ever had to deal with that sound like that are big fucking pains in the ass who are convinced their kids shit perfume balls, piss liquid gold and beat Jesus at arm wrestling.
I just have a thing about entourages, posses, homies, and little league dads.
well, if timmy could do all those things, he would be worth 15 mil a year, as he could be his own manufacturing plant
gotta be honest here…the kid was groomed for the big payday
dad is happy, cuz he gets a little taste and doesnt have to work as hard
next stop for timmy is some money from endorsements….which are right around the corner
if dad and his agent are smart, they set the kid up so that he really wont have to work after 30….and i dont begrudge him that at all
now if it were zito’s dad who was talking….i would be pissed
how long before the thing gets defaced?
About as long as it takes Renteria, Molina, Sandoval and Uribe to wipe out the post-game spread
rofl
Anybody thats read OBM for a little while knows how I feel about Selig. Anyway, the Seligulas sold controlling interest in the team to a lawyer investment banker from the Bronx named Mark Attanasio about 5 years ago. When I first read about it, I took it to be a descendant of Albert Anastasia…different family though). Moving right along, a quick google search of OBM here kicks out 83 posts.
Holy Shit, now that I think about it, that’s a whole lot of keyboard time wasted writing about somebody who isn’t worth a bead of sweat off a donkey’s dick. Anyway, Emperor Seligula is not looked upon very favorably by ESPN’s Jim Caple. Caple does a nice job of poking the wigged one with these lines:
But what the fuck do you do with a Bud Selig bobblehead? Its not worth anything. I don’t think the recycle folks will take it, it won’t get anything on e-bay and you can’t even wipe your ass with it.
This is the same assweepay that tried to cut Paul Molitor’s salary when he reached free-agency status after the 1992 season. Molitor told Selig to fuck himself with Sal Bando’s dick, went up to Toronto collected himself 211 hits, OPS at .911 and won himself some world series shit and cement his way into the HOF.
Yeah. By all means build this fuckface nosepicker a 7 foot statue and put it right between the two of Robin Yount and Henry Aaron. With taste and insight like that Bud Selig could someday get elected to the U.S. Congress or the White House even.