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Pretty interesting read:
One of our most significant motivations for denying baseball is right here in the tropics. His name is Jeffrey Loria, and he owns the Miami Marlins, who start regular-season play in just a few weeks. A March 1 story in the Atlantic called the pudgy art collector's stewardship of our baseball team, which has twice won the World Series, "the biggest ongoing scam in professional sports." The magazine's article describes, as New Times has in the past, how Loria hornswoggled $515 million in public backing for the stadium and parking facilities, then delivered a losing season and sold off all his best players.
The magazine blamed Selig: "If Marlins fans want results, they should send a few representatives to Commissioner Bud Selig's office in New York. There's a clause in Selig's contract mandating that he act in 'the best interests of baseball.' Right now that would mean stepping in to prevent owners like Loria from using a big-league team as a front for squeezing money from taxpayers."
So this is the guy who wants our records? Isn't he the same commissioner who in 2002 approved the complicated deal that gave Loria the Marlins, betrayed the City of Montreal, and caused Loria's partners to accuse the artful merchant of racketeering? (The charges were later rejected by an arbitrator but continue to roil baseball fans.)
Of course, if only Loria's misdeeds were at issue, we still might give Selig the records. But he represents an organization with a long history of getting things wrong. It started with Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Chicago White Sox player and son of a sharecropper who was unjustly banned from baseball for fixing the 1919 World Series. The guy who probably had more to do with that deal, White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, walked free after the scandal and even had the White Sox stadium dedicated in his name.
Then there is the horrible, racist history we'd like to think ended when Jackie Robinson was signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946 but continued with white-trash owners like the Minnesota Twins' Calvin Griffith ("Black people don't go to the ball games, but they'll fill up a wrestling ring") and Marge Schott (who admired Adolf Hitler, used the N-word, and compared African-Americans to monkeys).
And finally there is the case of Mark McGwire, who admitted to using steroids throughout the 1990s before setting the record with 70 home runs in a season in 1998. Reporters spotted drugs in his locker and wrote about it, but the league allowed him to keep playing. He continues to be involved in baseball, currently as a hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Who was the commissioner of baseball during this morass? The same one who wants our records: Selig.
The magazine blamed Selig: "If Marlins fans want results, they should send a few representatives to Commissioner Bud Selig's office in New York. There's a clause in Selig's contract mandating that he act in 'the best interests of baseball.' Right now that would mean stepping in to prevent owners like Loria from using a big-league team as a front for squeezing money from taxpayers."
So this is the guy who wants our records? Isn't he the same commissioner who in 2002 approved the complicated deal that gave Loria the Marlins, betrayed the City of Montreal, and caused Loria's partners to accuse the artful merchant of racketeering? (The charges were later rejected by an arbitrator but continue to roil baseball fans.)
Of course, if only Loria's misdeeds were at issue, we still might give Selig the records. But he represents an organization with a long history of getting things wrong. It started with Shoeless Joe Jackson, the Chicago White Sox player and son of a sharecropper who was unjustly banned from baseball for fixing the 1919 World Series. The guy who probably had more to do with that deal, White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, walked free after the scandal and even had the White Sox stadium dedicated in his name.
Then there is the horrible, racist history we'd like to think ended when Jackie Robinson was signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946 but continued with white-trash owners like the Minnesota Twins' Calvin Griffith ("Black people don't go to the ball games, but they'll fill up a wrestling ring") and Marge Schott (who admired Adolf Hitler, used the N-word, and compared African-Americans to monkeys).
And finally there is the case of Mark McGwire, who admitted to using steroids throughout the 1990s before setting the record with 70 home runs in a season in 1998. Reporters spotted drugs in his locker and wrote about it, but the league allowed him to keep playing. He continues to be involved in baseball, currently as a hitting coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Who was the commissioner of baseball during this morass? The same one who wants our records: Selig.
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