The Futility Infielder

Baseball fans and Wisconsinites had reason to rejoice last Friday, when Wendy Selig-Prieb announced that the Milwaukee Brewers are being put up for sale. The longest-tenured ownership in major league baseball is on its way out, providing a glimmer of hope for a team which has suffered eleven straight losing seasons and a 21-year postseason drought. Not only does the franchise have a chance at a fresh start via a new ownership, the sale will remove commissioner Bud Selig's blatant conflict of interest -- namely his 26 percent stake in the franchise, which was placed in a trust in 1998.

The Brewers have had a rough winter. Just after season's end, team president/CEO Ulice Payne was forced out by the board of directors when he publicly objected to their plans to cut payroll by 25 percent. Legislators reacted to the bad publicity the move generated by saying that the Brewers had reneged on their pledge to field a competitive team in exchange for $400 million of taxpayer funds to build Miller Park, and have pushed for a state audit of the team. Meanwhile, star attraction Richie Sexson was traded to Arizona in a nine-player deal that brought unimpressive returns.

The basic details of the Brewers' situation are gory enough without peeking into the books: $110 million in debt, $44 million in new money poured into the franchise during the past six years, a 40 percent drop in attendance since Miller Park opened, one of the league's smallest payrolls coupled with the biggest slice of the revenue-sharing pie, and two consecutive last-place finishes. Every detail screams the same conclusion: this team is bankrupt of good ideas and needs a change, starting at the top.

That's been the case ever since 1992, when Selig led the palace coup which dumped commissioner Fay Vincent and himself became acting commissioner. Not coincidentally, that was the last season the Brewers finished above .500, and in the six years Selig kept the "acting" role, he showed far more interest in backroom politics and battles with the players' association than he did with putting a winning product on the field. His sole accomplishment with the Brewers since ascending to the dubious throne was completing the stadium deal which resulted in Miller Park, a $400 million boondoggle with a busted roof. Nevertheless, it's that park's 30-year lease which will keep the Brewers in Milwaukee after they're sold.

As acting commissioner, Selig's shining accomplishments included presiding over a 272-day player strike, canceling the 1994 World Series, and instituting the three-division league, the wild card, and interleague play. That stellar record of achievement enabled him to become full-time commissioner in 1998, while his interest in the ballclub was placed in a trust. While he's clearly spent more time waging his disinformation war on the baseball world as full-time commissioner, it's impossible to believe that Bud's role in the Brewers has entirely ceased. The words of his henchman, MLB president and COO Bob DuPuy, don't even ring true: "Bud has been scrupulous in avoiding any appearance of either favoring or being involved with the operation of the Brewers." Not when Selig has invested $13.2 million in the ballclub over the past "five or six" years (nobody, not even the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, seems concerned with determining the temporal accuracy there; that vagueness has been a staple of every Brewers-related financial report this winter). Not with his daughter assuming the team president and CEO titles and then stepping down from those roles after 2002 to stay on as chairwoman of the board, from which perch she keyed Payne's ouster. Not when one potential investor was told last year that "board members did not want to accept outside investment that threatened Selig's control of the team, albeit through a trust."

And not with the Brewers somehow receiving the largest chunk of revenue sharing money of any team, a fact which remains obscured and underreported. On that note, here's a challenge: the first person to send me a link to a published report of the Brewers's actual (not projected) revenue sharing money for 2003 wins a Futility Infielder coffee mug. The news that the Yankees made the largest revenue sharing payout in 2003 was widely reported, but nowhere did anything say which teams will be on the receiving end, or how much money they will get. It's good to be the king, because you can sweep that kind of news right under the rug.

Art Thiel of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer lays some good lumber on Selig over his ethical issues. Starting from the viewpoint that Pete Rose doesn't understand why his actions have worked against the best interests of the game, Thiel essentially asks, "Et tu, Bud?":

Having said that, it is nevertheless difficult not to feel a twinge of empathy for the pug following news late last week that the Milwaukee Brewers were put up for sale by Bud Selig, who not only has owned the team since he hijacked the Pilots from Seattle in 1970, but, as commissioner since 1992, has been Rose's opponent to reinstatement.

In Selig's statement regarding the sale, he said in part, " ... While I have played no role in the administration of the Brewers, putting my ownership share in trust in 1998, I am convinced and have been for many years that it is in the best interests of the game" to sell.

Really? If my math is right, that means it took two years less for Selig to realize he was compromising the game than it took Rose.

On behalf of a grateful America, Mr. Commissioner, I salute you for your rapid response and, in demonstrating you have at least 14 percent more integrity than Rose, we hope you bring the same high standards to the search for weapons of mass destruction in the greater Milwaukee area.

Selig didn't describe the bolt of enlightenment that moved him to cop to the obvious -- that the embarrassing conflict of interest between his jobs never should have been allowed to happen.

All we know is that the motivation couldn't have been conscience, because if that had ever been a threat in his life, he never would have stolen the Pilots.

"Stolen" is such an ugly word. Selig was part of a group that in 1970 purchased the floundering Seattle Pilots for $10.8 million. The Pilots had gone bankrupt during the spring training prior to their second season; barely a week before the season, the team hastily moved to Milwaukee, with a new name and logo sewn directly onto their old uniforms. Legend has it that the van containing the Pilots' equipment left Arizona spring training and parked in Utah, waiting for instructions on which city the ballclub would call home.

Thiel points to the sorry state of the Montreal Expos, the Red Sox-Marlins-Expos ownership shuffle, and the contraction debacle as just some of the ethical lapses on Selig's watch. About the latter:

If indeed contraction were ever viable, a strong candidate today would be a team that has had 11 consecutive losing seasons, a claimed debt load of $110 million, a disenchanted fan base and a lease that is ironclad. Instead, Selig will now attempt to sell the Brewers in one of baseball's smallest, least affluent markets.

It might be tempting to suggest he is about to be hoist with his own petard. But Selig invested only $300,000 of his own money to buy the Pilots in 1970, and should the Brewers sell for, say, the $180 million price last year of the Angels, his share would be almost $47 million, less the $13 million he is said to have invested in operations.

So, presuming he can find a buyer, he will emerge nicely. It will be hard to say the same for baseball during his tenure as commissioner.

It's open season on Bad Rug Bud. And while I'd prefer if he confined his incompetence to one franchise rather than spreading it out over 30, I know that the good people of Milwaukee have been looking forward to the day Selig sells the team for a long time.

Thanks to Stephen Nelson of Mariners Wheelhouse for clueing me into the Thiel article ahead of the curve.