This Saturday Commissioner Bud Selig says farewell as Commissioner of Baseball a job he has held since being named interim commissioner in 1992 former commissioner Fay Vincent was ousted in a coup.  Selig was interim commissioner till 1998 when he was officially named to the post on a permanent basis.  At the time of his taking the reigns he was still owner of the Milwaukee Brewers which he did eventually sell to Mark Attanasio a decade later.  He originally purchased the Brewers just prior to the 1970 season when the then Seattle Pilots who began play in 1969 where in bankruptcy court.  Selig immediately moved them to Milwaukee and renamed them the Brewers replacing the Milwaukee Braves who left town after the 1965 season to be in Atlanta.

As commissioner I feel he has a mixed legacy because among his low lights was cancelling the 1994 World Series due the players strike.  That was the first time the World Series wasn’t played since 1904 when the New York Giants wouldn’t play Boston.  The other negative moments of his stewardship was either being ignorant or ignoring the ped problem in baseball till the 2002 basic agreement.  I can’t completely fault him though because the players association was just as guilty as the owners in that regard.

Another issue was the supposed contraction that was supposed to occur in the early 2000’s with the Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos where targets for elimination.  Baseball never pulled the trigger on this.  Instead the taxpayers of Minnesota funded a new stadium for the Twins and Montreal eventually moved to Washington D.C. as baseball returned to the nations capital for the first time since 1971.

However his questionable ownership practices with baseball taking over the Expos from Jeffrey Loria who moved himself to Miami to take over the Marlins.  Which allowed Marlins owner John Henry to cash out and get the inside track to eventually purchase the Boston Red Sox in 2002.  One of the bidders for the Red Sox Frank McCourt was allowed to somehow purchase the Los Angeles Dodgers before he was forced to sell eventually.  Also one other bidders Charles Dolan was taken care of when his brother Larry Dolan was able to purchase the Cleveland Indians.  Unfortunately for New York Mets fans their owner Fred Wilpon who was caught up in the Bernie Madoff scandal and runs the Mets like their a small market hasn’t been given a nudge out the door.

The All-Star game and Interleague play are related in my mind.  Growing up one of the things that made the all star game special was that the players for each squad usually never saw each other during the season.  The only times they’d see the other league was either through a trade or in spring training in Florida or Arizona.  So the all star game was a fun way to see which league was better.  With interleague play it has taken away that mystery.  The other negative about it is that their only about a half dozen natural rivals that make sense and the rest are forced.

I have a hard time with the All Star game deciding who has home field in the World Series. Your teams success in October is being predicated by a bunch of guys who won’t be playing by then.  Their is no reason why you can’t go by best record like hockey and basketball does.  The only thing would be is a wild card team would defer home field to a division winner.  Unless of course you had a situation like the 2014 season in which both teams are wild cards then best record would come into play.  Another thing on the All Star game back in 2002 the tie in Milwaukee when both teams ran out of pitchers,  At one time teams didn’t try to use everybody in the game as they only used half the staff till the modern era.