Bud Selig, yesterday at a Wall Street Journal panel of the four major sports commissioners:
"I think you won't be able to recognize baseball in the next five to 10 years. That's how fast we're growing."
Sometimes I wonder if Bud Selig understands that chief among the game's charms is that, unlike the other major sports, our game is fundamentally the same now as it was 100 years ago. Yes, change comes, but it is incremental change. When, as often happens, people lose track of the game in their late teens and early 20s, they can come back to it a few years later and not feel lost.
Baseball has experienced tremendous growth in attendance and revenue under Bud Selig, and many of the changes he has ushered in -- interleague play, realignment, the Wild Card, etc. -- have, generally speaking, been successful. I can't help but feel there is a limit, however, to how much change this game and its fans can tolerate in a short period of time. As such, I hope those comments were something said implusively in response to a broad question as opposed to the first suggestions of some transformational agenda on the part of the good Commissioner.
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You give him far too much credit. I don't care one thing about his "supposed" achievements, he was in charge during the steroid period of the game. Of course he should not shoulder all the blame. But the "buck stops here" philosophy is one he takes lightly. Under his leadership, and I am using the term lightly, he allowed the record book to become a joke. In 2001 Bonds hit 73 juiced home runs. Sammy Sosa hit 60+ juiced home three different times. Mark McGwire his 71 juiced homers in 1998 and 66 more the following year. Alex Rodrique's hit 57 juiced homers in 2002 and 52 the year before. Roger Clemens winning 6 Cy Young awards, the last three juiced to the hill. This is Seligs legacy. He should have been fired years ago but the owners, especially San Francisco, love him for the number of stupid fans that pay their money to fill the parks to watch these freaks hit homers. Me, I'll take Roger Maris, Stan Musual, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and all the rest of the players during the golden era of baseball.
Please please look up scoring in the 30's.
They said the same thing when Ruth started hitting home runs.
It's cyclical. This too shall pass. Selig BELIVE IT OR NOT, is the best commissioner baseball ever had. That doesn't mean he is infallible or hasn't made HUGE mistakes, it means, the other commissioners were INEFFECTIVE.
He actually has moved the game forward in a positive way.
Why would anyone want this game so fundamentally changed that "we won't recognize it in 10-15 years"? The game itself is an overview of life - changing the game won't increase revenue or its popularity - the game is what it is. To those of us who love the game for itself, this potential change will not be popular nor appreciated. Leave it as it is with only the minor tweaking it sometimes requires.
Is interleague play a big financial success? Because in my opinion, as a baseball fan it freaking sucks.
i just hope his big plan is to quit...