Today the LA Dodgers declared bankruptcy. The details are too long to go into here. Highlights include $100 haircuts, 5 homes in Bel Air and a divorce that includes the owner's wife handing out blow jobs to the chauffeur. A great LA story.
This sordid tale of a once proud franchise also represents another terrible chapter in the tenure of Bud Selig. His reign as Major League Baseball's commissioner has included:
1 A canceled World Series. The first ever. Previously neither World Wars had prevented a World Series.
2 The steroid scandal and the completely improbable claim that the commissioner, owners and GMs didn't know or facilitate it.
3 The BK of the Texas Rangers
4 The BK of the Dodgers
5 The revelation Mets' ownership is thick as thieves with Bernie Madoff.
6 The have and have-not MLB franchises and allowing the "national" sports media to present the game as an endless five-hour Yankees/Red Sox game.
7 Baseball's loss of African-Americans. It is now a "white boy and foreigner's game."
8 And locally, the catastrophe of the Oakland A's ownership. Co-owner Lew Wolfe is a shameless So Cal real estate speculator with no interest in baseball. He is also the former fraternity brother of you guessed it - Bud Selig.
So why does this matter to the non-baseball fan? It is a prime example of how those in power are rarely held accountable. Bud makes the owners' money, and the good of the game has ceased being something a commissioner cares about since Bart Giamotti and Faye Vincent stopped running the show. Sure, baseball is a trifling thing compared to tyrants, terrorists and homegrown scum like Dick Cheney. But in his ability to shield himself from accountability and act in the most brazen compromised manner, Selig reflects our times.
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