Is MLB Commissioner Bud Selig really a “baseball purist”?

One glaring gripe I have with departing baseball commissioner Bud Selig is his insistence that he is a traditionalist, a “baseball purist.” I consider myself to be a baseball traditionalist. So I tend to define one’s status as a purist by his basic beliefs about the game and how they mesh with the tried and true traditions of baseball.

Consider some of Selig’s beliefs of precisely what is good for the game and scrutinize a few of his innovations, the ones he has repeatedly stated he is eminently proud of. Start with his decision to link the outcome of the All-Star Game to the home field advantage in the World Series.

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Mull this scenario over: A marginal player for, say a last place club, makes the All-Star squad simply because each team must be represented in the mid-summer classic by at least one player. That player enters the game as a pinch hitter in the last of the ninth inning with his team’s bench virtually depleted. Jammed, and totally fooled, he hits a Texas leaguer which drops in and drives home the winning run. Now, because of his fluke hit, his league somehow DESERVES the home field advantage in the series which supposedly pits the best two teams in baseball against each other? Ludicrous.

Of course, the idea of the best two teams meeting in the World Series is yet another issue. Not since 1968 were the top teams, the elite from the American and National League, insured a trip to the Series. Division play naturally changed that, but Selig’s love affair with the Wild Card concept further bastardized the purity of the title “World Champions.”

Yes there are arguments, mainly financial ones, to support the Wild Card system now in place. More and more fans do have hope for their team’s playoff chances deeper and deeper into the season. However, the fact remains that a purist, by the very definition of the word, recoils at such a change to the game.

Furthermore, those dreams of grandeur for fans of teams shooting for a Wild Card berth and a chance for a World Series title are, again, to a purist, artificially generated.

Teams with records barely inching above the .500 mark do not deserve a mere whiff of a chance to claim the title of world’s champs. Would Selig be proud of his brainchild if a team with, say, a record of two-games above .500 went on a torrid post season streak and wound up winning it all? A purist certainly wouldn’t.

A purist would say the current playoff system is not unlike a negligent doorman at a ritzy nightclub, one who isn’t diligent enough to, in this case, keep “baseball riffraff” out in the cold.

Therefore, the system often punishes a deserving team which has played well all season long (go back and see how many times the team with their league’s best record has won the World Series since division and/or wild card play began) while all too often rewarding a team that, record-wise, is not all that much above being labeled a mediocre team. Both teams, though worlds apart, share the same postseason spotlight.

I remember the days when each league had eight teams which battled throughout a long season to separate the best two teams from the legitimate contenders while, quite naturally, shunning and casting aside the mere pretenders.

That system, though not perfect, made the strongest attempt to match the elite from each league against each other in the World Series. It attempted to try to guarantee the eventual champ was, in fact, the game’s finest team (or at least as close to achieving that goal short of, say, establishing a best-of-161 game World Series).

Yes, Selig can certainly try to boast of great financial strides and revel in the innovations made under his watch while still insisting he is a purist. But no, try as he may, he can’t have it both ways–he can’t fool true traditionalists.