Baseball Retrospective

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig says he’ll look at expended instant replay in wake of blown call – ESPN.

As I suspected, my opinion is shared almost to the letter from Mr. Selig.

The thing about that job that people forget it, sometimes the right call is the hardest to make, because it’s usually unpopular. And that is why, despite all of the good that he has done for the game of baseball, he is often villified.

Being a lifetime Brewers fan, I’m not shy to let you know that I didn’t always approve of the way the franchise was run while it was under his direction. Even with that said, he was the man that brought baseball here; and he was the man (with an assist from a State Senator) who kept it here.

Then he become Commissioner of Baseball, a position he never really wanted, and was thrown into all kinds of tough spots with the union, and scandals, and messes. Here we are, almost 20 years later, and baseball is in better shape in nearly every conceivable way. Mr. Selig had a lot to do with that. He’s a rarity: a true baseball purist, but also willing to take a look at any idea that might improve the game.

It’s a shame that for many years fans think of him as stiff, unpersonable, an “owner”, not doing a good job, problems are his “fault”, and then there’s this image that people have found hard to erase:

When history looks back on Bud Selig’s reign as the Commissioner of Baseball, it will look well upon his time and efforts. People have put Kenesaw Mountain Landis on a pedestal for being “tough”. Bud Selig is “tough” as well, because he always does the “right” thing and never the “popular” thing.