Baseballhead:
The Wages of Hubris

Michael Cox

Zoinks! It's yet another edition of Baseballhead, where we're sure that due to production problems with last night's People's Choice Awards, CBS just ended up playing a tape of last year's show. I'm tellin' ya right now, in the year 2030 you can look forward to the 50-year-old members of N'Sync collecting the Favorite Musical Group award for their album, Our Prostates Are The Size Of Melons.

Moving to the world of baseball, the good news is that even with the NFL postseason in full swing, Major League Baseball is maintaining a high level of media coverage. The bad news is that the coverage is almost entirely negative. While no one has yet unearthed photos of Bud Selig shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, all bets are off if there's even a chance Hussein might know a way to force the players' union to accept a salary cap.

Let's have us a look-see at the issues at hand:

Commissioner Bud Selig Accepts Loan From Carl Pohlad's Bank. To MLB owners, this falls under the category of "who gives a rat's ass." Sure, there's a very specific rule against this sort of thing, and sure, it looks really bad that Selig is now offering Pohlad a large payoff to fold the Twins, but it isn't against the law, is it?

However, to the rest of us, this is wrong on a multitude of levels. First and foremost, there's the rule. Mind you, the owners do make these rules, and if there are no complaints from amongst their ranks, internally it's a no-harm, no-foul situation. However, when the public sees them not only breaking their own rules, but not even seeming to care, we wonder whether something else isn't going on.

And when that "something else" involves a higher-than-market-value payoff to Pohlad for his team, bulls throughout the Midwest can see that mother of a red flag. One of said bulls is Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, who has publicly called for Selig to resign. Conyers, who was last seen attempting to get something resembling real financial figures from Selig, proudly joins this column, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and now ESPN.com's Jim Caple in insisting that it's time for Selig to consider a new career as a strip-club DJ.

As for the argument that the loan wasn't a big deal -- if Selig was a legitimately qualified borrower, why didn't he simply secure the loan from an institution not directly tied to an MLB franchise? It couldn't have been that difficult -- if he was creditworthy.

On the other hand, if Selig wasn't creditworthy, it's a special favor from an inner-circle crony, and that's a whole 'nother stench in the landfill.

It's something like this that makes me cringe whenever someone says that Selig is "one of the brightest men I've met." A bright man would have never made this mistake. A bright man would have realized that it doesn't matter whether no one cares if you break the rule, or even whether there isn't a conflict of interest -- the rule exists in the first place precisely to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. And that goes double when you're the frickin' Commissioner, Shilo.

No, this mistake was dumb. It was photographed-while-kissing-your-mistress dumb. Shredding-Enron-evidence dumb. ABC-prime-time-programmer dumb. Jay and Silent Bob could run the sport with more integrity.

At this point, as far as we know Selig may or may not have perpetrated any manner of other improprieties, because we know that not only does he not care what he does, he doesn't care whether we know what he does.

Red Sox Sale Goes to the Low Bidder. This one's a little more complex, but no less seedy. When we last left the Sox, Marlins owner John Henry and former Padres owner Tom Werner were poised to take over the club. The deal was so done that Dan Duquette had already offered to wax their limos.

But now it seems that because there's a public trust involved, it was the team's duty to sell to the high bidder. Or was it? Mass. Attorney General Thomas Reilly swooped down last week to find out whether they didn't accept the Henry/Werner bid, $90 million lower than the bid of New York lawyer Miles Prentice, because they were Friends Of Bud.

Current team CEO John Harrington says the Yawkey Trust will actually get more money from the Henry/Werner sale than it would have from Prentice because the team's current minority owners are willing to accept smaller shares in the desired deal. Oh, and it's likely that MLB would not approve Prentice for ownership.

If Prentice's name rings a bell, it should -- he was also the high bidder for the Royals, another team that had been held in a trust. Selig's gang refused to approve the sale, instead asking team chairman David Glass to make a bid. Glass was duly approved, and Kansas City's hopes for fresh money and enthusiasm were dashed.

There's another tidbit that's missing from this picture: Reilly is reportedly a good chum of the lawyer for the third bidder for the Sox, Cablevision head Charles Dolan. The plot thickens.

As if by magic, days after the Attorney General announced his inquiry, Dolan suddenly made a $700 million offer. Never mind that the deadline was three weeks ago -- the hope is that if Reilly manages to get John Henry out of the picture, Dolan will have the next-best bid.

Still with me?

Frankly, it would have been nice to see a new bidder come into the picture, one who had no ties to or previous dealings with MLB. Like Madonna perhaps, or Steven Spielberg (come on, think of the possibilities -- the special effects alone would make it worth double the ticket price). However, it's likely that even someone intimately familiar with Hollywood would find the MLB "family" a tad dysfunctional.

I can see how this is a tad fishy -- selling Henry the Red Sox is the first step in a ballet that will send Expos owner Jeffrey Loria to Florida and place the 'Spos in the custody of MLB itself -- until they are contracted or moved. That oughta help attendance in Montreal this season, alrighty.

Owners Ask Players To Approve Higher Luxury Tax. Selig (am I the only one getting really tired of hearing that name?) reopened labor negotiations this week by telling player representatives he wants to impose a "luxury tax" on payrolls over $98 million, and share half of all teams' local revenue. While the players don't have to buy into the revenue sharing, a payroll "tax" does require their agreement. Three words immediately come to mind: Not Bloody Likely.

But why not? It's not a salary cap. Teams won't be restrained in their spending, so what's to worry about?

Well, first of all, such a scheme would carve a sizable chunk out of the top teams' revenues. Lower budgets for the likes of the Yankees and Braves mean lower payrolls (Steinbrenner's gotta eat, you know). And even worse, with the limited luxury tax/profit-sharing we've seen recently, it's become clear that some teams simply choose to pocket the cash and maintain their "small-market" budget (see: Brewers, Milwaukee, 2001).

The players have smart people in charge. I think we've ascertained the intelligence level of MLB ownership well enough to know how this is going to end. It's going to be about as pretty as an early John Waters film.

FOX Chief Admits World Series Ads Were Gaudy. Speaking of pretty, during the 2001 World Series we were bombarded with more Ally McBeal promos than any human should be asked to withstand. In a rare bout of candor, FOX chairman Sandy Grushow agreed, where the digitally inserted behind-the-plate ads were concerned:

"It was pretty clear to anybody who was watching that, having the image of Calista Flockhart didn't exactly feel appropriate, and had I been able to make it go away as I was sitting in my own living room, I certainly would have."

Tell you what -- you make a device that allows us to make Calista Flockhart go away, you can name your price.

David Wells Finally Signs With Yanks. Yeah, yeah. Not as good as the trailer. Oh, and apparently he's been losing weight, so soon he may not even be fun to mock anymore.

And we won't even raise the practical question of whether the Astros should expedite removal of all instances of the phrase, "Enron Field."

about the author

Michael Cox yearns for the sweet release of sleep. Send him videos of Selig's All-Star Game speech at mc@strikethree.com.