IT’S HARD TO imagine a people more full of hope than Americans in the opening days of 1997. As President Bill Clinton takes his second oath of office, jobs are plentiful, home values are rising, and the stock market has almost doubled in the last two years. Fed chairman Alan Greenspan mumbles about irrational exuberance while the pundits joke about a market on steroids, but no one seems to mind.
Seinfeld, again featuring a larger-than-life baseball owner, keeps the country laughing as TV’s top-rated sitcom. For sentimental souls like Bud Selig, it’s all about the Green Bay Packers, the NFL’s third-oldest team, who vanquish the New England Patriots to win their first Super Bowl since 1968. Selig also has a vested interest in the Packers, given his seat on their Board, his boyhood allegiance to the Green and Gold, and his admiration for a league in which even the team from the smallest market can win it all.
Milwaukee, the 17th-largest market in the country when Selig brought the Brewers to town in 1970, is now 32nd in America and dead last in the major leagues. So Selig remains determined to make MLB as small market friendly as the NFL, and despite losing to Don Fehr at the bargaining table, he enters the new year on a roll. He has money in his pocket, thanks to the new revenue sharing agreement. He has a new stadium on the way. Just a few hundred yards from his County Stadium office, workers are finally pouring the foundation for Miller Park, which has already doubled the value of his franchise years before the ceremonial first pitch is thrown.
And he has a job that’s taking him places. There’s an unspoken acceptance inside baseball that Selig is now the Commissioner, the only “acting” being when he denies he wants to keep the job. Congress has lost interest in pushing for an independent Commissioner, and media and the fans have grown accustomed to an owner living in Milwaukee while occupying the game’s top post.
Selig also wants his election to be unanimous, which won’t happen as long as Peter O’Malley—whom Bud has marginalized the past four years—still owns the Dodgers. But there are few other detractors. If anything, support for Selig after the labor talks is as strong—if not stronger—than ever.
Sure, there are a few owners who aren’t enamored of Selig’s ways. Some of the hard-liners are still angry with the way the labor negotiations ended—especially Reinsdorf, who took Bud’s eventual support for the deal as a personal affront.
But no one denies that Selig has delivered: the owners now have revenue sharing, and their new luxury tax is the first restraint on salaries since the start of free agency. There are double the number of teams playing for postseason money, a product of the wild-card and three-division format, and the hotly anticipated interleague play will debut this season. They enjoy a lucrative national television deal and, most important, their franchise values are growing higher and higher.
So they’ll indulge Bud’s need to be courted, they’ll spend the money on a search firm for appearances only, and they’ll take turns publicly paving the way for his coronation. Many of them have pushed Selig to relocate to New York, but that’s never going to happen, no matter how much sense it makes and how often his wife Sue begs him to make the move. Instead Bud’s all but convinced Paul Beeston to leave his post as president and CEO of the Blue Jays and move down to New York to be his right-hand man.
That move will free Selig to pursue his vision to centralize baseball under an all-powerful Commissioner. On this year’s agenda: a dramatic realignment of the American League and the National League to build more rivalries and cut travel costs; building the rationale for even more revenue sharing in the next contract; and a game plan to finally market baseball on a national level.
Selig already persuaded the big market boys to support the formation of Major League Baseball Enterprises last January. The unit’s mission is to centralize marketing of all uniforms, jackets, and caps bearing team logos and—most important—distribute revenues equally among all 28 teams. It is yet another attempt to socialize the profits of the Yankees, whose apparel is almost always the game’s top seller.
Selig settled on Kraft Foods executive Greg Murphy as CEO last June, but it quickly became apparent that the Naval Academy grad had little feel for baseball and even less for dealing with its owners. Selig is already working on an exit strategy when Murphy presents his underwhelming plan for the coming season at the Waldorf Astoria on March 3. Entitled “March to Opening Day,” it’s a combination of public relations events—Kodak’s 100 Memorable Moments in Baseball exhibition tops the list—$150 million in unspecified marketing deals, and promises of more dollars from former sponsors. Murphy can’t show any of baseball’s new TV spots—they were not finished in time for this meeting.
What he shows instead to the handful of reporters sitting in the cramped conference room is the helmet cam, a lipstick-size camera Fox plans to insert into catchers’ masks during the season. Longtime baseball executive Bill Murray tries on the mask in a moment that is truly cringeworthy.
When Murphy’s presentation mercifully ends, his day goes from bad to worse. Most of the reporters present have spent the past two days chasing rumors of a big deal brewing between the Yankees and German apparel giant Adidas. It turns out the rumors were true, and while Murphy was showing off his helmet cam, Steinbrenner was issuing a statement laying out the details.
The deal is a stunner: Adidas will pay the Yankees $95 million over the next 10 years for the exclusive right to put its trademark three stripes on just about everything it can: the outside stadium walls, the outfield and backstop fences, the dugout roofs, ticket stubs. It will also advertise heavily in Yankees publications and TV and radio broadcasts. And the release states that the partners will “collaborate on joint programs involving certain athletic equipment and apparel, within the Yankee rights.” Whatever that means.
The deal is a staggering sum of money, more than teams like the Brewers earn each season from their TV deals. Selig thought he’d prevented just this sort of inequality by creating MLB Enterprises. Damn it, all apparel with team logos is MLB property! But Steinbrenner claims this deal doesn’t fall within those parameters, and under the new revenue sharing rules, he only has to share 20 percent of his take instead of half.
The reporters all have the same question for Murphy: Does the Yankees-Adidas deal undermine MLB Enterprises? “We do not have the details, and until we do, it’s very difficult for me to share what our views are,” is all Murphy can say. “As soon as we do, we will tell you what we think the situation is.”
Selig is getting the same question on call after call to his office in Milwaukee. “Obviously, we haven’t seen the deal,” Selig says. “Until I see the terms, it would be unfair to comment or speculate on it.”
Selig instructs his outside counsel Bob DuPuy to ask Yankees lawyers for a copy of the contract. Their answer? “We’ll consider the request.” What the hell? Selig has already received calls from Reinsdorf, Pohlad, and others who are furious with Steinbrenner. And they don’t yet know that Beeston’s Blue Jays and other teams are already talking about reaching out to Adidas for deals of their own. So much for Bud’s national marketing plan.
“How could he do this to me?” Selig mutters as he reaches for the phone to dial Steinbrenner’s number. George promised he’d let the new system work, and he won’t even give it a chance to get off the damn ground.
Just last week George unleashed a profanity-laced tirade at Selig during an Executive Council meeting. The reason: Bud’s opposition to George’s pursuit of Japanese pitching star Hideki Irabu. Under baseball’s rules, San Diego received the exclusive bargaining rights to Irabu, but Steinbrenner wants in. Since when do rules apply to George?
Steinbrenner shouted about baseball’s conspiracy to hold back the Yankees that day. Now he does this. Selig doesn’t know what’s worse—the new Yankees deal or that George did it behind his back. But one thing is certain: things will get ugly in a hurry.
Steinbrenner’s decision to keep the Adidas deal a secret until he was ready to announce it wasn’t a tough one. “There’s a good chance baseball will try to block this deal if they know about it in advance,” David Boies told George soon after the Boss hired the famous litigator to help craft the Adidas contract. “MLB might be displeased with a fait accompli, but it’s probably better to seek forgiveness than permission.”
The decision to make the deal was even easier. Steinbrenner always says you have to spend money to make money, and after winning it all last October, he’s been forced to ante up to keep winning. Joe Torre wanted a raise and an extension; he got both, with two more years at $2 million per. Bernie Williams, a free agent after the ’98 season, settled for $5.25 million to avoid arbitration. Agent Scott Boras immediately set the cost of an extension at $9 million a year, and the center fielder’s long-term future as a Yankee is suddenly in doubt.
Cecil Fielder wanted a two-year extension or a trade, his right as a veteran traded in midseason. He’ll eventually drop his trade demand, but Steinbrenner still has to pay him the final year on his Tigers contract, a Yankees-record $7.25 million.
The youngsters want to be paid, too. Andy Pettitte ($600,000) and Mariano Rivera ($550,000) were easily satisfied, but Jeter, the AL’s unanimous Rookie of the Year, rejected Steinbrenner’s offer for $450,000—$100,000 below the young star’s asking price—on March 5. The two reconcile five days later at $540,000, plus $25,000 in performance bonuses.
All this drives the Yankees payroll to $62 million, the highest in baseball history. George expects a big return on his investment, and he’s never asked more of his management team than he’s demanding right now. Indeed, GM Bob Watson will check in to a hospital complaining of chest pains in late April, and doctors will tell him to reduce his stress, lose 20 pounds, and cut his 105-hour workweek to a manageable 80.
The truth is, the Boss was on a rampage even before the owners finally approved the new labor deal, publicly stating that revenue sharing and the luxury tax “can’t be something that goes on and on forever.” If it does, he says, “then perhaps we should move the game to Russia.”
He’s even more strident in private, ranting about owners who aren’t using the money to improve their teams as promised. Some, he says, are taking their newfound dollars and paying down debt incurred during ’94, when Bud shut down the game with George’s Yankees on their way to the World Series. Some are using it to pay off the loans they needed to buy their teams. And others are simply stuffing the cash into their pockets.
Steinbrenner is right on all counts, and the Commissioner is supposed to make sure none of this happens. But George suspects that Selig’s doing the same thing with the Brewers’ revenue sharing checks, so how can he expect Bud to tell the other owners to stop? No, Steinbrenner says, these men aren’t his partners. They are his competitors, and he will do everything in his power to bury them.
Besides, they ought to be thanking him. Steinbrenner has once again shown them that they are all grossly undervaluing their franchises, just as he did with the landmark cable deal in 1988. The sneakers war is raging, with Nike, Adidas, and Reebok showering teams and athletes with money just to wear their shoes and display their logos. If nothing else, George’s Adidas deal just upped the ante for sponsorship rights for every team in baseball.
George has always understood the value of the Yankees brand, and he’s charged COO David Sussman and marketing director Derek Schiller with maximizing the team’s name and its recent success. Adidas is just the first of many deals the Yankees have in the pipeline—from computer companies to cars—all deals that will challenge what MLB controls and what each team can call its own.
The Yankees turn over a copy of their Adidas contract and supporting documents a few days after the deal is announced, and it’s not long before Selig hands down a ruling: Steinbrenner cannot sell Yankees T-shirts—or any other items of clothing—that bear the Adidas logo. They can’t even outfit their grounds crew in Adidas apparel.
This is just the kind of thing George’s lawyers warned him would happen, and after a few weeks of fruitless negotiations, Steinbrenner raises the stakes: the Yankees and Adidas sue each of the other 29 teams, MLB Enterprises, and 14 officials, owners, and lawyers, challenging the new revenue sharing agreement on antitrust grounds while charging that all of baseball is conspiring against his team.
“At least since the Yankees purchased Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox in January 1920, many clubs have expressed envy and enmity towards the Yankees for their aggressive competitiveness… both on and off the field,” litigator David Boies writes in the 91-page suit he files on May 6. The lawsuit is especially critical of one franchise—the Milwaukee Brewers—citing Selig’s team for “mismanagement” that has resulted in 14 straight years without a division title, the longest drought “of any current Major League Club.”
Baseball’s reaction is predictable. Steinbrenner is quickly kicked off the powerful Executive Council in a unanimous vote by its other nine members. He’s also removed from the realignment committee, among others, and there is even talk of a third suspension. Two hundred days after his team won the World Series, George Steinbrenner is once again persona non grata in baseball.
“This is sad,” says Selig when he announces the moves. “All of us recognize our responsibilities when we come into baseball and while we’re in baseball. Most of us believe very strongly we have a responsibility to act like partners.”
Most, but not all. The owner in New York is still playing by his own rules.
Selig’s troubles with the Boss notwithstanding, it’s turning out to be a very good season for the man from Milwaukee. Interleague play, the season’s big experiment, is a smash hit—attendance for the first 84 games is up 35 percent. The Yankees drew 168,719 when they won two of three from the Mets, the biggest crowds since Yankee Stadium was remodeled in 1976 and a 115 percent increase over their season average.
There are legitimate pennant races in every division, and a few teams in each league are battling for wild-card slots. Even Bud’s Brewers have been surprisingly competitive, holding on to first place in the AL Central as late as June 4, despite having the game’s fourth-lowest payroll.
Many owners are intrigued by Selig’s “radical realignment” idea, in which as many as 15 teams would shift leagues along geographic lines to increase rivalries and cut down travel costs. (The plan’s biggest opponent is the union, which thinks this break from tradition is a big mistake.) It appears likely that Milwaukee will move to its old home in the National League, a shift needed if Arizona and Tampa are to be placed in different leagues when they debut in ’98. The proposed move polls well with Brewers fans.
Hitters are again racking up home runs at a record rate, with Mark McGwire, Ken Griffey, Barry Bonds, and Tino Martinez among a dozen players on pace for 40 homers. Seattle is poised to break Baltimore’s record of 257 homers in a season, set just last year. Pitchers are putting up big numbers, too, none better than Clemens, who’s experiencing a rebirth in his first season with Toronto. With one start left in July, the 34-year-old Rocket is a game-best 16–3, with 173 strikeouts in 163 innings and a 1.54 ERA.
The Commissioner has received high marks for the season-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the sport’s color barrier. It kicked off when Selig joined Rachel Robinson and President Clinton at Shea Stadium on April 15, the date of Jackie’s first game. Stepping up to the microphone, Selig told the 54,047 fans, “No single person is bigger than the game. No single person other than Jackie Robinson,” and then announced that baseball is retiring Robinson’s number. “No. 42 belongs to Jackie Robinson for the ages,” said Selig.
But the Commissioner hasn’t been able to slow the disappearance of black players from his game. This season, black players make up 17 percent of baseball, down from the high of 27 percent in 1975; by 2012, their numbers will fall to 8 percent.
To Bud’s delight, there’s constant chatter about Selig taking over the Commissioner’s job. And his desire to be drafted with unanimous consent is falling into place now that Peter O’Malley is deep in talks to sell his Dodgers to News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch. O’Malley was part of the old guard who dismissively referred to Selig as Bud Light when he forced his way into baseball in 1970. Selig knows O’Malley resents how effectively Bud relegated him to the sidelines.
And now the time is right to centralize baseball. It’s July 23, and Selig is on a media conference call to announce Paul Beeston as the game’s first president and chief operating officer. Bud has nothing but praise for the man he’s forgiven for signing Paul Molitor four years ago, and points out they already have a strong working relationship from Beeston’s time as chairman of MLB’s budget committee.
Most of the 75 writers on the call are well acquainted with Beeston, the first person ever hired by the Blue Jays. The Toronto native started as a team accountant back in 1976 and climbed to president and CEO, overseeing the rise of one of the game’s model franchises. But Labatt, the beer company that has owned the team from the start, was bought by Interbrew in June of 1995, and the Belgium-based company has little interest in baseball. Beeston is ready for a change.
It’s a shrewd hire by Selig. Beeston is respected and well liked by all the owners, and may be the only man on good terms with Selig, Steinbrenner, and Don Fehr. Now he’ll run baseball’s day-to-day operations in New York and report directly to Selig. “We have the best game in the world, and that is sacrilegious for a Canadian to make that statement,” Beeston says. “But I believe in this game.”
The reporters are done quickly with Beeston and spend the next hour asking Selig if this move means he’s going to make his own role official. Many of Bud’s media enablers are on the call, and they take turns telling Selig how much everyone wants him to accept the job.
Beeston plays right along. “It’s no secret that I hope Buddy takes the job,” he says. “I will go down there, and if I can make his job easier, I think perhaps he will put himself in a position where he can at least consider it.”
Selig basks in the attention. He insists he’s never wavered from his decision that the job he’s held for nearly five years is temporary. But he’s also careful to leave the door open. “I can’t help speculation,” he says.
The Chicago Tribune’s Jerome Holtzman asks Selig if he can comment on just the possibility of becoming the permanent Commissioner.
“Jerry, I think I have,” Selig replies. “There is just nothing more I can say, and I sort of… I just… I don’t even focus on these things anymore.”
But Holtzman keeps pushing. “It would be easy for you to say, ‘I am not interested.’ I don’t know if you are saying that.”
“I think I am,” Selig answers. “And all I’m saying is that I have been very clear, very lucid for five years. I don’t see any need to say any more, and I am not going to.”
But he will address how the job has changed in the five years since he’s taken charge. “I think the Commissioner of baseball has as much authority and power,” the Commissioner says, “as any human being in America.”
Mark McGwire takes one last practice swing, shifts into his batting stance—back straight, knees slightly bent—and looks intently out at the Giants’ young All-Star left-hander Shawn Estes. It’s the top of the 3rd in a 2–2 game in San Francisco on September 10, and with the Cardinals’ season all but over, their fans back in St. Louis are thinking about only two things:
Will McGwire hit another home run today?
And will the free-agent-to-be sign to play for their beloved Cardinals next season?
The answer to the first question comes on Estes’ next pitch, a 79 mph changeup that catches too much of the plate. McGwire lashes the bat with his 19-inch biceps, and the ball rockets on a line into the first deck in left field, 448 feet away. The solo shot is McGwire’s 50th home run of the season, making him only the second player in baseball history to hit 50 in back-to-back seasons.
The other player?
The 12,623 fans at 3Com Park stand and cheer for the man who until August 1 had spent his entire 10-year career playing across the bay in Oakland. But the A’s are rebuilding, and new owner Steve Schott said he could not pay Big Mac more than the $7 million he is earning this season. So on July 31, Oakland sent its biggest star to St. Louis for three young pitchers of modest potential.
McGwire hit 34 home runs before leaving Oakland, many of them towering shots that evoked memories of Mickey Mantle’s tape-measure homers in the ’50s. After going without a home run in his first seven games as a Cardinal, McGwire started doing things neither Ruth nor Mantle had ever done. His homer today is his 16th in his last 80 at bats—one in every five official trips to the plate. Ruth’s career average of a home run every 11.76 at bats is the best in baseball history. McGwire is now second at 11.94—and falling.
Of course, neither Ruth nor Mantle had ever used anabolic steroids.
McGwire first took steroids with teammate Jose Canseco in 1989, the year before Congress made it illegal to use the drug without a prescription, then started using again after the 1993 season to combat injuries. He took them last season, when he hit 52 home runs after missing the first 18 games of the season, and again this season, his walk year.
Like most juicers, McGwire rationalizes his decision by telling himself that using steroids is not against baseball’s rules. And, like all those players, he’s wrong. Steroids were first put on baseball’s list of banned drugs in 1991 by then-Commissioner Fay Vincent, who sent out a memo announcing the ban to every team. That same memo was reissued this season on May 15, this time carrying the signature of Bud Selig. Clubs were instructed to post the six-page memo in their clubhouses, but most general managers didn’t remember receiving it.
But even if the GMs had posted it, would it have mattered?
Certainly not in San Diego, where general manager Kevin Towers is pretty sure he knows what’s really in the little black bag Ken Caminiti has carried with him all season. Or in Oakland, where Canseco isn’t shy about telling teammates which steroids to use and how to use them.
Or in New York, where first-year Mets GM Steve Phillips remembers seeing players shoot up in minor league locker rooms when he was a player in the ’80s. Phillips asks the Mets doctor to speak to his team about the dangers of steroids use, and the young GM wants a clean game. But he also wants a level playing field and knows his job is to win. He’s not about to search every shoe box and bathroom stall to find out who on his team is using performance-enhancing drugs. And he is not alone.
And would it really matter in St. Louis, where the team opens concession stands early for the droves of fans showing up to catch McGwire go yard in batting practice? St. Louis certainly has been good to Big Mac. The media cover him with breathless adulation, and Cardinals fans cheer him wildly before every at bat, all but begging the big first baseman to commit to their team.
And six days after matching the Babe, the 33-year-old McGwire answers their prayers, announcing that he’s accepted the team’s three-year, $28.5 million offer to remain a Cardinal. He is immediately lionized for taking less money than he was sure to get on the free agent market. He’s even deferring some of the money in order to give Cardinals management more flexibility to improve the team, which will finish fourth in the NL Central this season.
“I’m happy here,” he says. “That’s what matters.”
The Cardinals end the season at home with three games against the Cubs, whose right fielder, Sammy Sosa, is finishing up his own fine season: 36 home runs, 119 RBI, and 22 stolen bases. But all eyes remain on McGwire, who thrills the home crowds with a pair of home runs in the season’s penultimate game and another in the final game.
His season-high 58 home runs are the most since Hank Greenberg hit 58 in 1938, leaving Cardinals fans counting the days until next season. McGwire averaged a homer in every other game with the Cardinals, but asking for another season of 50 would be a bit greedy. Even Ruth, who hit 50 or more home runs four times, never did it in three straight seasons.
Besides, McGwire will be in St. Louis for three more years. He even has an option for a fourth. How could any Cardinals fan possibly ask for more?
There will be no parade down the Canyon of Heroes in Manhattan this fall. Moments after Bernie Williams’ deep fly ball to left-center field is caught by the Indians’ Brian Giles to end the ALDS and the Yankees’ season, Steinbrenner emerges from his suite on the first level of Jacobs Field and meets the media.
It’s been a strange year for the defending champions. The Yankees led the league in pitching and finished second in runs, with Tino Martinez hitting 44 homers and emerging as a major force. They won four more games than last season’s team but never spent a day in first place, settling instead for the AL wild card.
Gene Michael had the season’s biggest save when he calmed George after Mariano Rivera blew three of his first six save chances as the replacement for closer John Wetteland. “He can’t handle it,” Steinbrenner said.
“Just leave him alone,” Michael told him. “He’ll be fine.”
Rivera was fine, converting 17 of his next 18 save opportunities. And that was before Mo found what he called his “gift from God,” the cutter he discovered in a mid-June catch with teammate Ramiro Mendoza. Rivera insists he changed nothing in his grip, but he suddenly had a late-breaking cutter that broke bats—and the backbone of rallies. He finished with 43 saves, six wins, and a 1.88 ERA.
To the chagrin of many, Steinbrenner succeeded in landing Hideki Irabu, sending two minor leaguers and $3 million to San Diego for the Japanese star. And to the delight of most, Irabu had a difficult first season, going 5–4 with a 7.09 ERA. The Yankees’ best personnel move was one they didn’t make. Watson convinced Steinbrenner not to send Jorge Posada and Mendoza to Boston to bring back Mike Stanley.
But the defending champs fell far short of a repeat, falling in the first round to Cleveland in five games. “All I have to say is I’m proud of them,” says the Boss, a tight smile on his face. “We battled them all the way. A few breaks here, a few breaks there… we’ll win it next year.”
Steinbrenner’s friend in Milwaukee is also looking forward to next season. Union opposition shelved radical realignment, so Selig will have to be content with the Brewers moving to the NL Central. The move to the National League sits well with Milwaukee fans, and Selig is hopeful the shift will help bring fans back to County Stadium after just 1.44 million came out to watch this season’s 78–83 Brewers.
It’s lame-duck owner Wayne Huizenga’s Marlins who emerge as World Series champions, beating the Indians in seven games in just their fifth year in baseball. Huizenga, who spent $89 million to bring in free agent third baseman Bobby Bonilla, outfielder Moises Alou, and pitcher Alex Fernandez, announced his plans to sell the team earlier this season. Any chance that winning would change his mind was quickly dispelled when the Blockbuster Video founder immediately announces he’ll cut the team’s payroll to the high teens while continuing to shop his ball club.
The reason: Huizenga insists the Marlins can’t pay for star players and turn a profit unless the taxpayers of Miami build the billionaire’s team a baseball-only, retractable-roof stadium like the one now being built in Milwaukee.
“Unless a new stadium is built, where luxury suites and all other revenue go directly to the team, I do not believe the Marlins will ever be in a World Series again,” says Huizenga, who claims he lost $34 million while playing in Pro Player Stadium, which he happens to own. He also owns the stadium’s other tenant, the Miami Dolphins. “I sincerely doubt that someone will lose $30 million a year again in order to win the World Series.”
Alou, who hit 23 home runs and drove in 115 during the regular season and sparkled in the World Series, is shipped to Houston on November 11 for three journeymen pitchers. A month later, the team sends Kevin Brown, its best pitcher, to San Diego for rookie Derrek Lee, who played 22 games in ’97, and two minor league pitchers.
The sell-off won’t be complete until the spring, when six more stars are sent packing, but it’s clear even now that next year’s Marlins will bear little resemblance to the team that just won baseball’s biggest prize. The Florida fire sale reminds veteran baseball writers of 1976, when A’s owner Charlie Finley sold off the stars from his championship teams only to have Commissioner Bowie Kuhn use his “best interests of the game” powers to void the deals. One of Kuhn’s vocal supporters was the young owner of the Brewers, Bud Selig.
But this is a different time and a different Bud Selig. Earlier this fall, Selig and the Executive Council gave Carl Pohlad permission to explore selling the Twins to buyers who would move the franchise to Charlotte. The reason: Minnesota voters said no to a taxpayer-financed stadium. It won’t be the last time Selig considers shafting baseball fans in the Twin Cities.
Protecting the home team now has strings attached, and Selig remains silent as the best team in his game is dismantled. But his message couldn’t be any clearer: build new stadiums for our teams or suffer the consequences.