MLB Commissioners: Where Are They Now (Besides Dead), Part 3

For days now (Part 1, Part 2), I’ve been bitching about the past escapades of baseball’s grand commissioners.  We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve ridiculed the elderly.  Today, that all comes to an end as we end on a happy note: the steroid era!!

Fay Vincent (1989-1992)

Fay–and no, he was not a 75-year-old woman–had been Bart Giamatti’s deputy, and inherited the role not so much because he was the right choice for it, but because Giamatti was no longer alive.

This unfortunate chapter in MLB history was highlighted by a series of “didn’t.”

Fay and his girl’s name threatened to ditch the idea of the DH, but didn’t.  He should have disciplined Joe West for bodyslamming a guy, but didn’t.  He had the chance to get rid of George Steinbrenner forever, but didn’t, but then it didn’t matter, because Steinbrenner asked for (well, probably demanded) a lifetime ban anyway, but then asked for (probably demanded again) to be brought back after two years of trying to hijack the Olympics.  Because George Steinbrenner did whatever he wanted, all the time, and never had to worry about consequences except those he wanted.

All of this pussyfooting was clearly pre-empted by God, who sent the Loma Prieta earthquake to the World Series in 1989 to try and stop things before they could begin.

But they didn’t, and well.  Fay and his plans for realignment and expansion were kicked the hell out by a group of–hey now–old white men, led by–

Bud Selig (1992-present)

Bud started the Wild Card and Interleague Play, canceled the World Series, reinstated George Steinbrenner (but not Pete Rose), got MLB a 400% increase in financial revenue, won’t allow instant replay into the game liberally (which is how all this started, really), pushed baseball through 9/11, and moved so slowly in regards to steroid and HGH issues that it was difficult to tell if he was moving at all.

From a fan’s perspective, I felt burned when the steroid era began.  I was sickened and frustrated and pissed.  There was nothing I could do to punish these guys, even though I wanted to, so hopefully the guy in charge would.

Now, they’ve increased the testing to include minor leaguers, which is a good thing, because apparently that’s where all this starts.  But on the whole, I can’t say it feels really good.

My problem is that I always assume there’s some end-all, be-all solution to these giant problems no one is really fixing, and everyone will understand it, and it will be feasible.  But there can’t be.  I, like all of us, really, expect Bud to come up with just such a solution without having any idea how he should do it.

Start banning people?  Why?  So a decade from now people can start campaigning to let them back in?

“DO SOMETHING,” we yell, with no idea just how broad a term like “something” really is.  The only real solution to stopping steroids (which is impossible, by the way) is to go back and stop them from getting passed out in the first place.  But in a way, Bud is actually trying to do that by expanding performance enhancer tests to the minors, where this kind of behavior traditionally spawns.

But he should really DO SOMETHING about instant replay.

Conclusion

Honestly, when I started this, it was a last minute idea that I thought of on the way to work.  “Yeah,” said me, “I can milk so many jokes out  of those wacky gentlemen.”  And I did.  In all seriousness, and this is pretty evident given the title, but I assumed all the past commissioners would be dead.  This wasn’t based so much on “reality” as it was on how the current comish looks like a bag of dead skin hanging on a nail.

But, some weren’t yet in the grave.  Some managed to get things accomplished for the better.  But I think what we can mostly draw from this experience (“We,” of course meaning myself and the bird sitting outside the window behind me reading this) is that being the MLB Commissioner is one of those jobs, like Detroit-based realtors or players for the Raiders, that no one can do well.

I think it was Fay Vincent who, on his way out the door, was yammering around how he had 26 bosses, or however many owners of teams there were, and how he couldn’t make everybody happy, and he’s right right.  How could you possibly make almost 30 old men happy without a barrel of Metamucil and a desire to hear stories about nothing?

But that’s the whole point.  Nobody can do it well if they are worried about pissing people off.  You know those “cool” parents who want more than anything in the world to re-live their high school days by being best buds with their kids?  Those are the parents whose kids hijack tractor trailers and use drugs that only come in needles.  They’re bad parents because they’re not doing their job as parents–to raise their kid, not be friends with them.

So many of these stories ended nightmarishly because a particular commissioner succumbed to the wills of the owners or the players or their own immaturity, flashing that “for the good of the game” mantra like it was a get-out-of-fucked free card.

I don’t know how to do their job correctly.  It is a thankless, stubborn, cold-hearted job, and it would help if somebody could look at a problem, zoom out, see how it was affecting baseball, and then form a course of action… and not one that involves personal gain or favoritism in any direction.

Instead, we get secret votes, guys who know business but not baseball or vice versa, and always, always someone who has probably been described as “set in his ways” at some point in the last two years.

So can we complain about a position that no one will ever be able to do perfectly?  They’ve tried to get rid of the single commissioner and replace it with, I don’t know, a council of 12, or maybe something that’s not a direct Battlestar Galactica reference.

My point is, yes, we can complain about it.  Because in this particular case, its the closest we’re going to get to “fixing it” until somebody comes up with a way to replace it.  Until then, it’ll just keep being imperfect, and reflecting the personality of the man inhabiting it, rather than the role itself.

Justin writes for every single web site in the world, including this one, That Balls Outta Here, Sports Talk Soup, and Philthy Blog: The Unofficial Blog of Philadelphia.  He wore a t-shirt in the pool until he was 19 years old. You can stay current on all the Call to the Pen content and news by following us on Twitter, Facebook, or by way of our RSS feed.