Dave Paisley

Just when you thought Bud Selig couldn’t make himself look worse in the eyes of the baseball world, you find that the used car salesman from Milwaukee pulls yet another boneheaded stunt from his bag of tricks. When I said that the MLBPA boycotting the All-Star game was a good idea a couple of weeks ago, I thought that it might embarrass Bud into actually negotiating a real labor deal. However I had no idea that Bud would somehow manage to embarrass himself so comprehensively on national TV two nights in a row that any embarrassment from a player boycott would pale into insignifiance. Admittedly, the first night he did it just by showing up to present the Home Run Derby trophy and got roundly booed by his hometown "fans". The second night took a little extra, above and beyond effort from him, though.

Imagine it’s a tense All-Star game, the NL jumps out to a big lead. The AL comes back. The NL retakes the lead. Both managers are using all the players for a change. After the ninth, game tied, each team has exactly one pitcher left. Vicente Padilla for the NL, Freddy Garcia for the AL.

Now, let’s stop and think for a second. What’s the maximum number of innings any pitcher will be allowed to throw in the All-Star game? Even if you only have a half a brain, you know the answer’s two. Forget the good old days in umpty-ought when Humpy Carmichael would stay in and throw till his arm fell off because he knew it could be sewn back on in time to pitch both ends of a double header on Thursday as his team bore down for the pennant. Like it or not, today’s pitchers are coddled and, as Tim McCarver pointed out in excruciating repetition, there was no way Joe Torre was going to ask Freddy Garcia to pitch more than two innings. Nor Bob Brenly of Vicente Padilla. So even a blind frog with an IQ of 3.5 could see that, absent any further scoring, eleven innings was about as far as this game was going to go.

(Now, once again, for the slower pupils at the back of the class, I'll remind you that Bud Selig is the Commissioner for Life of Major League Baseball. That post carries a salary much heftier than the that of the average blind frog, especially a mentally challenged one. It also assumes a certain amount of forward looking, strategic thinking. Well, you’d think so, but those qualities haven’t been evident in many past commissioners, unfortunately. And if they’ve been absent in the past, then they are doubly, nay triply, nay quadruply absent in today’s MLB chief executive.)

So what does Bud do? He sits there twiddling his thumbs until when? The middle of the eleventh inning. Interesting timing, because if you’re going to cut the game short, it seems only fair to announce it before a full inning, so both sides have fair warning. Instead, there’s Freddy Garcia warming up for what seemed like twenty minutes while Bud argues with himself about what to do. Even noted non-brain surgeon Tim McCarver took all of 10 seconds to come to the only, blindingly obvious conclusion that the game must end after eleven.

And as if that wasn’t enough, instead of announcing it right then, they let the bottom of the eleventh start and announce it as the second batter is at the plate. So, instead of announcing the bad news in an inning break, well ahead of time, when the boos could have reached a peak during a commercial break away from the eyes and ears of millions of on-air baseball fans, Bud managed to maximize his humiliation. Could this man be any denser? I mean, really, this guy is less popular and more inept than Ken Lay, for crying out loud. Richard Nixon had higher approval ratings right before he resigned.

To which I can only add, "Well duh!" The no-win situation was entirely of his own making, and yet he apparently expects our sympathies. And as I contemplate Bud’s attempt to wriggle off the hook, I am once again reminded of the immortal words of Homer Simpson, weaseling is what separates us from the animals — except the weasel. (And I might add that there seems to be a fair amount of weasel in Selig's bloodline.)

And as if that wasn't enough, we're then faced with the biggest PR debacle of the night. After making a big hoo-hah a couple of days ago over naming the All-Star MVP trophy after the recently late and great Ted Williams, Selig decided not to award the MVP trophy to anybody. Say what? Just because there's no winner, there wasn't one outstanding performance on the field that could have been recognized? This is self-foot-shooting at it's finest, ladies and gentlemen. Wasn't there at least maybe a genetic specialist in the house who could have received the trophy for her contributions to cryogenics or cloning?

So, MLB owners — this is the guy who’s leading your labor negotiating strategy (and I use the word loosely.) With smarter leaders than this, the owners have been slaughtered in previous labor disputes. Keep him on and you only have yourselves to blame for the ultimate demise of MLB as the cornerstone of summer.

Quick, what's your favorite Bud Selig feature? The weasel face, the bad toupee or the Austin Powers teeth? Dave Paisley wants to know, so fire away to drdjp@strikethree.com.

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