In the more than 40 years I have known Bud Selig, I have never heard him tell a joke. Ten days ago, speaking to reporters at the conclusion of the owners’ quarterly meetings, the commissioner told a joke.
He didn’t mean to be funny, and no one laughed, but taking a moment to reflect and putting it in context, it was funny.
Asked about the status of the Tampa Bay Rays’ effort to get a new ball park to replace dismal Tropicana Field, Selig said he had received a “very discouraging” report two days earlier from the Rays’ owner, Stuart Sternberg.
“We were optimistic that this was moving in a very positive direction,” Selig said.” Unfortunately, we are stalled. It’s serious enough that in the last 48 hours I’ve given very strong consideration to assigning someone from MLB to get involved in the process and find out what is going on.”
One would think that the Rays would benefit from the commissioner’s office becoming involved in their effort to get a new park. Before they get too excited about the prospect, however, they should think about the Oakland Athletics.
Four years and four months ago the commissioner got involved in the Athletics’ efforts to get a new park, and he’s still involved and the A’s still don’t have a new park.
To put these situations in perspective, the Athletics’ circumstances are different from the Rays’ plight. The A’s owner, Lew Wolff, wants to move the team to San Jose, and he needs permission from his college friend to make the move. Selig, however, has not said go and be prosperous.
He hasn’t said much of anything other than the committee he appointed March 30, 2009, to study the matter needs to do more studying before it can make a recommendation and he can make a decision. But he doesn’t say what work the committee still has to do. The committee most likely doesn’t know what work it still has to do. Selig just says keep working.
By now, the members of the committee should have earned doctorates, in studying, if nothing else.
Selig obviously has no intention of making a decision before he leaves office at the end of next year. Earlier this year he refused a request from the mayor of San Jose to meet with him.
In effect, Selig’s absence of action is a decision. He is telling Wolff, “Old friend, you may be in baseball because I invited you in, but don’t expect me to bail you out of your plight of playing in a dilapidated park. You pays your money, you takes your chances.”
The city of San Jose, meanwhile, has sued Selig and MLB on antitrust grounds, hoping to wrest a settlement out of MLB, which, the city figures, will not want to risk having the court strip it of its antitrust protection.
Imagine Selig, who apparently is hung up on his legacy, being known in history as the man who cost baseball its legendary antitrust exemption.
If Selig is the chief culprit in this criminal act, the San Francisco Giants are culprit 1A. Given a magnanimous gesture by a former A’s owner, Walter Haas Jr., when the Giants were desperately seeking a way out of San Francisco, the Giants are stubbornly sticking to their technical claim that San Jose is part of their territory.
Baseball would be immeasurably better off if the A’s moved to San Jose, the 10th largest city in the country, and left the cluttered Bay Area wholly to the Giants.
Major League Baseball would be better off, too, if Selig had taken the suggestion I have made more than once, and that is lopping Florida off its map.
After years of bungling their efforts to get a new park, the Marlins finally got it but have squandered the opportunity it gave them. The Marlins and the Rays are last in attendance in their respective leagues this season, each at about 1.25 million.
Unlike the Marlins, whose rosters and payrolls have changed drastically over the years no matter who has owned them, the Rays have maintained a steady (low) payroll and a competitive team under Stuart Sternberg’s ownership.
Sternberg, who has built a strong organization headed by executives who had no baseball experience when he hired them, deserves better in St. Petersburg, especially after he rescued the Rays from the clutches of Vince Naimoli, the team’s founding owner and one of the worst owners in the past half-century.
Sternberg inherited Tropicana Field, which is the ugly sculpture an aunt bequeaths to her favorite nephew, who hates it but can’t get rid of it. The Rays are only halfway through the 30-year lease.
Unlike Wolff in Oakland, Sternberg isn’t looking to move anywhere but to a new park. The city of St. Petersburg, where Tropicana is located, has made it difficult for Sternberg to find his dream home.
Sternberg and Matt Silverman, the club president, did not respond to multiple telephone and e-mail messages, but the mayor of St. Petersburg, Bill Foster, said recently he would allow the Rays to explore options throughout the entire Tampa-St. Petersburg area.
What wasn’t clear was whether the discouraging development Selig said Sternberg told him about occurred before or after Foster spoke about expanding the Rays’ options. Nor was it known what the discouraging development was.
As of the weekend, Selig had not designated anyone to become involved in the Rays’ stadium business. A major league official said Selig won’t do anything until after Rays’ officials have talked to St. Petersburg representatives.
But, the official said, “It sounds like St. Petersburg is relenting about Tampa.”
If the Rays are lucky, they will resolve the stadium issue before the commissioner gets involved.
THE GUN-BLAZING ATTORNEY
He came in two guns blazing, blow torch lit and spewing flames, and now he’s probably gone, not to be seen or heard again. I don’t know how much Joseph Tacopina was paid for his cameo, but thousands would cover it.
Tacopina was the loud mouth lawyer Alex Rodriguez hired to execute his scorched earth plan against the Yankees and Major League Baseball. But as quickly as he appeared, doing a flurry of high-profile, high-pitched television and newspaper interviews, Tacopina was gone.
He may reappear, but it’s not likely because Rodriguez ordered his legal team to cease and desist. Tacopina certainly won’t participate in Rodriguez’s appeal of his 211-game suspension.
“He’s not going to be anywhere near the grievance,” said a lawyer, who knows Tacopina well.
Tacopina could have done a better job for whatever Rodriguez paid him. Commenting on the severity of A-Rod’s 211-game suspension, Tacopina said in an interview with The New York Times, “The legacy of George Steinbrenner would be horrified. This is the New York Yankees. This isn’t some thug-culture club.”
What Tacopina doesn’t know is that Steinbrenner, the late owner of the Yankees, frequently gave players second chances, especially when they had been involved with drugs. Of the 21 players who were disciplined as a result of the 1985 Pittsburgh drug trials, Dale Berra, Rod Scurry and Al Holland played for Steinbrenner.
PIRATES POISED FOR WINNING SEASON, POST-SEASON
The Pirates fell into a tie with the Cardinals for the National League Central lead Saturday night, 
but this could still be a monumental week for Pittsburgh. With a 76-53 record going into Sunday’s game, the Pirates were in position to end the most infamous streak in professional sports history.
The Pirates have to win five games to ensure they cannot suffer their 21st successive losing season. Six wins will give them their first winning season since 1992.
General manager Neal Huntington and manager Clint Hurdle did not return telephone calls Saturday to discuss their unfamiliar status. Maybe they were busy preparing a well-deserved celebration. More likely they are tired of talking about the losing streak and would rather focus on their position in the standings and their strong chances of reaching the post-season.
The last time they played post-season games their left fielder, Barry Bonds, had 176 career home runs.
WE GOT HIM FIRST
Peter Gammons, the long-time baseball writer for the Boston Globe, ESPN.com and MLB.com, has left all of that work behind and has created a Web site. He says on the site that he is looking for good young writers who have a passion for baseball, an admirable quest because the business can use all the good young writers who can be found.
However many young writers he finds, though, he should know that this Web site already has the best young writer, baseball or otherwise, in the Web world.
Zach Kram has occasionally substituted for me, most recently earlier this month and last month, and will do so in the future. His timing with a couple of the columns was especially impressive. He wrote about the Yankees’ futile farm system and the Cardinals’ fruitful farm system a week and a month, respectively, before similar postings by SI.com.