The 20-year reign of Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig ended this year, but not before he left the game in its most profitable state ever. But while record revenues are part of Selig’s legacy as commissioner, so too is the dramatic drop in the significance of the World Series in the United States. For many, Selig was an easy punching bag during his time as commissioner but a deeper look reveals an overall successful and innovative run.
A Bad Start
Selig oversaw the cancellation of the 1994 World Series early in his career and many fans and journalists never forgave him for that. It was indeed a catastrophe as the World Series has never held the national appeal that it once did. Beyond that, the 1994 shutdown doomed the Montreal Expos, who had the best record in baseball when the season lost that August. Montreal fans deserted the Expos and baseball after their team was denied its best shot at a title in its history. The team is now the Washington Nationals.
Underrated Parity
Selig inherited another big turnoff for fans which was that the MLB seemed to revolve around big market teams such as the New York Yankees, who were able to buy their way to multiple pennants. Other teams such as the Kansas City Royals, who were once perennial playoff contenders, were all of a sudden priced out of the market.
Selig did much to fix the disparity. While MLB still has the stigma of being a big market team game, a deeper look reveals that baseball has had a better variety of playoff and championship teams over the past decade than the NFL or the NBA. Such small market and modest revenue teams such as the Royals, Oakland A’s, Minnesota Twins, Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, Miami Marlins and Pittsburgh Pirates have all made the playoffs in recent years. Kansas City’s epic run to the AL Pennant this year was a final tribute to the work of Selig in fixing the competitive balance of the game.
Expanded Playoffs
There is a good argument that the 162 game grind of the regular season has become more meaningless now that the playoffs have expanded to include a one and done wild card game, let alone having a wild card team in the first place. But the better argument is that the expanded playoffs have kept fans tuned into baseball in the markets where teams are in contention rather than flipping over to the NFL.
Regional Rivalries
Another popular and sensible development under Selig was the realignment of divisions and an unbalanced schedule in which teams will play their division rivals around 18 games per season. While fans may tire of ESPN seemingly putting on the Yankees vs. Red Sox all the time red hot rivalries such as the Cardinals vs. Reds, Giants vs. Dodgers, and Angels vs. A’s have made for intense and entertaining matchups.
Interleague Games
Yes there are some odd and poorly matched interleague series that have to take place to rotate the schedule but such gems as the Giants vs. A’s, Angels vs. Dodgers, and Cubs vs. White Sox make this well worth continuing.
Playoff Games Buried
Perhaps the most justified critique of the Selig era is the difficulty of keeping track of what channels the playoff games are being broadcast on and then finding the channels. So while record TV money has come in, viewership has dropped significantly. It actually becomes a second job for most fans in having to research and find the most important games of the baseball season on TV.
The Legacy
Selig deserves a well-earned “B” for a final grade as commissioner. The game is more financially healthy than ever before, even if the sport itself has now been regionalized into something of a niche game. Perhaps that was inevitable and no commissioner could have stopped the power of the NFL. After all, matchups between losing NFL teams far better TV ratings than the MLB playoffs and World Series. But Selig never made much of a fight as he proved more than willing enough to sell baseball’s soul for massive profits.
The owners are happy with Selig as proven by their agreement to pay him $6 million per year as retirement pension. To them it was a Grade A Performance.
