Posted on 09/26/2013 3:03:41 PM PDT by SoFloFreeper
Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig, who changed the face of Major League Baseball while leading the sport into an era of unprecedented popularity and prosperity, will formally step down from the office when his current term expires on January 24, 2015. The announcement was made Thursday.
"It remains my great privilege to serve the game I have loved throughout my life," Selig said. "Baseball is the greatest game ever invented, and I look forward to continuing its extraordinary growth and addressing several significant issues during the remainder of my term.
"I am grateful to the owners throughout Major League Baseball for their unwavering support and for allowing me to lead this great institution. I thank our players, who give me unlimited enthusiasm about the future of our game. Together we have taken this sport to new heights and have positioned our national pastime to thrive for generations to come. Most of all, I would like to thank our fans, who are the heart and soul of our game."
(Excerpt) Read more at mlb.mlb.com ...
That home run race in 1998 brought MLB back from the dark, and even though we now know much more than we did then, it strikes me as a disgrace the way baseball insiders like Selig have allowed a few of those guys to shoulder the entire blame.
The worst development in sports isn't PEDs or expansion or tinkering with the playoffs, but it's the use of public funds for sports stadiums. I'm not sure where it started, but we haven't even begun to experience the problems that will bring. Once the government gets their foot in the door in any industry, you can be sure trouble is coming. Don't know if you can blame that on Selig, though.
I thought she was a baseball nut. I could be wrong...
Maybe she’s a baseball nut who dates football players!
I like McGwire, but never really Barry Bonds.
I hate what they do with the stadiums. They replace them after just 25-30 years. Idon’t mind ifthe city helps build the infrastructure support the stadium, or even donates land, but footing the bill for the construction of it really angers me.
The worst development in sports isn't PEDs or expansion or tinkering with the playoffs, but it's the use of public funds for sports stadiums. I'm not sure where it started, but we haven't even begun to experience the problems that will bring.It actually began with Milwaukee County Stadium, built for the old-old Milwaukee Brewers minor league team. The park was the first sports stadium in the country to be built entirely with "public funds."
The irony: the old Brewers never got to play there---the park was ready in 1953 . . . just in time for the Boston Braves' arrival. And the Braves weren't the first major league team to cast eyes on the Milwaukee park: Bill Veeck hoped to move the St. Louis Browns there a year before the Braves moved, but Veeck was blocked.
Another irony: moving the Browns to Milwaukee would have meant returning the franchise to their city of origin. Where they had been known, from 1894 through 1901, as the Milwaukee Brewers! Those Brewers had been an ancient Western League franchise and one of the two not to fold when, in 1901, the Western League declared itself a second major league: the American League.
I don’t mind if the city helps build the infrastructure support the stadium, or even donates land . . .It was the latter issue that triggered the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants for the west coast:
Dodger owner Walter O'Malley wanted to build a new ballpark in Flatbush, over or adjacent to the Long Island Rail Road's terminal there. What stopped him: New York building and planning czar Robert Moses, who was hell bent on never allowing a privately-built sports facility in New York city or state again so long as he ran the planning/building show for both.
Moses obstructed O'Malley from acquiring the final parcels he needed to build the park. Moses also wanted to all but jam down O'Malley's throat a publicly-built stadium in Queens. (To which O'Malley said, famously, "If we play in Queens, we're not the Brooklyn Dodgers anymore.") Read very carefully: Walter O'Malley had no intention of leaving Brooklyn until he realised Moses's power was greater than his own and that he wouldn't get the final land he needed to build a new park.
The intriguing historical question: If O'Malley was that adamant about not moving to Queens, why didn't Moses offer the Queens facility to the Giants, who couldn't afford to build the new ballpark they needed but who didn't have the specific borough identification the Dodgers did?
Giants owner Horace Stoneham originally planned to move to Minneapolis (the Giants had a farm team there at the time), where a publicly-built park was going up as well for a major league team. Only when O'Malley's jig was up in Brooklyn and O'Malley reached out to him---O'Malley knew there would be no point in going west without another team to compete out there, considering the scheduling of the time and the then-furthest west team being the Cardinals---did Stoneham agree to move the Giants to San Francisco.
You can get the whole, real story in two books: The Dodgers Move West (Neil Sullivan) and The Last Good Season (Michael Shapiro).
Dang. LOL!
I was a huge baseball fan...until the strike...
I just recently, like in the last two years starting getting interested in baseball...again...
I don't think I watched a game in over 15 years...that's how much it pissed me off...
Then how do you explain the name "Municipal Stadium" in Cleveland, which was built, I believe, in the 1930s. Wasn't that a government funded project?
That is an amazing story, I never knew about it. I will take a look at the book you referenced.
I don’t think I will ever know all the politics involved in such city projects. I just know that they are expensive but the city also receives the a benefit of having a major sports franchise.
Then how do you explain the name "Municipal Stadium" in Cleveland, which was built, I believe, in the 1930s. Wasn't that a government funded project?Cleveland Municipal Stadium wasn't built for baseball alone. I should have made clear I was speaking of baseball-only parks when I spoke of Milwaukee County Stadium; I shouldn't have said "sports stadium." Cleveland Municipal was built with local government funds. (There were rumours for years that it was a WPA project, but the WPA was formed after the stadium was built.)
Another rumour that turned out false: Cleveland Municipal wasn't built to attract the 1932 Summer Olympics. Those Olympics had been awarded to Los Angeles several years before the ground was broken in Cleveland. The old Mistake on the Lake was financed by voters approving a $2.5 million tax levy, though the park actually cost $500,000 more to build.
I don’t think I will ever know all the politics involved in such city projects. I just know that they are expensive but the city also receives the a benefit of having a major sports franchise.It depends. I'm not entirely sure Miami has gotten all that much benefit having the Marlins---particularly after their rather odious owner (Jeffrey Loria) snookered the city into building him a spanking new ballpark on the promise to provide a competitive team. He got the ballpark but the team is still anything but competitive. (Flip the coin and you see the Tampa Bay Rays, who are very well run, very competitive, and play in a park nobody likes---possibly including the team itself.)
I was a Marlin fan since 1993. They started to place in Joe Robbie Stadium, which was bought and paid for by Joe Robbie himself. The city provided the land and infrastructure support.
Wayne Huizenga brought the Marlins to the World Series, built up the roster and paid more for that year than maybe the previous 3 years combined. They win, and he demands a new stadium, it was voted down, and Huizenga sold the team to Loria. Loria did the same exact thing and got the Marlins to win the 2003 world series. Shortly after they build the stadium at the old Orange Bowl site. The Marlins always marketed to the Latin Americans. However, I didn’t see to many of them in the stadium. They mostly came from Broward and Palm Beach County and were middle class families. It would have been wise for him to build it near Boca or Ft Lauderdale. Now they have this big new stadium that is always empty. He cut to the payroll to by far the lowest in the league, and no one believes they will win a pennant anytime soon.
When you compare Joe Robbie, Wayne Huizenga and Jeff Loria in south Florida, Joe Robbie is a local hero. No one likes the other 2 that much.
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