Why Baseball Owners Hate Good Government

Why Baseball Owners Hate Good Government

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 03/25/2011 - 11:46am.
PETER MICHAELSON FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT


With major-league baseball's new season upon us, it's worth remembering that the sport used to have good government. That governance started in 1920 following the Black Sox gambling scandal. Team owners selected Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a former federal judge, for the job of baseball commissioner. He took it on the condition that he would have outright authority over all aspects of the sport.

Landis ruled until 1944, and he was followed by seven other independent commissioners, a string that ended with the forced resignation of Fay Vincent in 1992. Vincent had supported the players during the lockout of 1990 and scolded owners for colluding against the players. The owners, with the connivance in particular of Bud Selig of the Milwaukee Brewers (the current "commissioner") and Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox, had stolen $280 million from the players by rigging the signing of free agents. With the heist uncovered, the money was paid into to the players' union.

In perverse retaliation, baseball owners ejected the umpire. In the infamous coup of '92, they got rid of Vincent and busted the sport's independent governing authority. They made Selig acting commissioner and, in 1998, gave him the full title. With a wink and a nod, Selig presided over the use of performance-enhancing drugs, which conveniently added home-run glamour to the game while boosting ticket sales. He helped the sleazy process of replacing many of the iconic stadium names with come-and-go corporate names. Houston Astros fans had to fight off bouts of schizophrenia as the home field's name bounced from Colt Stadium to Astrodome to Enron Field to Astros Field to Minute Maid Park.

As baseball went from being the people's game to the owners' game, its steeped-in-history lore got whacked with the same wrecker's ball that battered down more intimate still-serviceable stadiums for taxpayer-funded, cathedral-like mega-stadiums. Fans became pay-per-Nielsen clicks, as the dominant camera view of televised games was set behind the pitcher, showing the batter, catcher, umpire, and a huge billboard that takes up much of the screen's dimensions. Viewers now have the option of being annoyed by the ubiquitous commercialization of the strike zone or they can become, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, mindless mediums of the message. Imagine all the interesting, varied camera angles we would see if that backstop billboard wasn't a financial homerun. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12529

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