Dateline: Washington

I just read my friend Blair's Blog. Many of the folks that read this blog read his, so a few things of note before I continue with mine. The biggest news is that Blair has a new post. His posting habit follow the cycles of the moon. When the moon is either full or new, a couple days later, h'll make a post. I suspect soon, we'll only get posts on days of lunar eclipses. Anyway, today, I would like to use my space to respond to his post. I know that there is a formal process in place in which to open a blog dialog: you post a response to the person's blog. However, in this case, I have more insight than the normal 2-4 sentence response and I didn't really have a topic but I had the time to post. So, I'm usurping Blair's topic for my own.

Quick summary: Blair is currently living in WVA, he's a Chicaggo Cubs fan but he's much closer to DC than Chi town so it's been easy for him to follow the goings on of the Nationals. As a result, he's become a secondary Nationals fan (like me and the Dolphins). Recently, there's buzz that one of the groups vying to buy the Nats is associated with W, our Village Idiot, who intends to buy the team off of them in an effort to position himself as the next Comish of Baseball. Blair states, and rightfully so, that he'd be a much better comish than the current joke.

While I actually do agree that W would be a better Comish then Selig, who is basically a puppet for the owners, I do not agree that he's the right man for the job. And I have reasons beyond the fact that he is currently our National Village Idiot and I hate him and if all were right in the world he'd be behind bars by the end of his current term. For some unknown reason, the man has an air of power about him and people (all of whom are either delusional or rich enough to buy me right now as their Life Time Pool Boy) actually listen to him and take what he says seriously. This is a problem with Selig. How can you take a man seriously when it takes him 7 years to institute a steroid policy (although in all fairness, he's only been trying for 2), then institutes a policy that is akin to giving an 8 y.o. time out for 15 minutes, and THEN tries to turn around 2 months later and institute a brand new policy which actually has some teeth. It's a classic ploy to be able to shift blame to the Players Union. Anyway, the point is the current comish is a joke and it has nothing to do with the fact that he seems to be a joke as a man. It's entirely because he's a former owner.

The commish of a sports league cannot have an agenda that can be easily swayed by one group or the other. He must be completely unbiased. He must be able to rationally establish policy which represents the best thing for the game, and in this case, the game is the owners, the players and the fans. If Village Idiot we made the Commish of MLB, he'd be Village Idiot Comish because his policy would constantly be swayed by the owners much like the current Jok Comish. The only difference would be that he'd have the support of the aforementioned delusional/rich people that happen to be fans of baseball. He would add credibility to the post by name only, not by action.

So, Paul, whould WOULD be a good Commish? Good question. There are a few people that I know about and I'm 100% certain there are dozens of others that I wouldn't know anything about (like anyone knew who Bart Giamatti was before he was the Comish that booted Pete Rose [FYI, he was the last good MLB Comish]). FIrst you have your media types: people who you have an amazing appreciation for the history of the game but don't come across as loathesome towards one group or another (like Mike Lupica against the fans and players or the black guy on PTI against the owners). There would be 3 good candidates from this pool: George Will, Peter Gammons and Bob Costas. Unfortunately, I don't think a media guy would ever let his name be included.

Next you then have to move to the realm of politics. From this group, you need to have someone that could get both side to understand the fiscal problems that face the game and accept tough compramises in order to get it so that Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Cincinatti or any other small market team might some day dream of winning a championship again. And no, Rudy Gulianni would not be a good cnadidate. Here, I'm thinking someone along the lines of a Howard Dean (who wouldn't be the least bit interested), McCain, Edwards, or some Midwestern Conservative Governor. Those guys in the Midwest don't take shit from any one. Key thing here though is that if you take a Republican, it would have to be someone that thinks that W has gone insane with the budget deficit thing. They'd have to go on record as saying, "our Village Idiot President is insane."

Lastly, you can look at the realm of entertainment. The problem here is, you can't have an actor, because he's going to side with the players. And you can't have an executive because he's going to side with the owners. You have to have a Director or maybe a Producer. Steven Speilburg would be a good Commish. Maybe Penny Marshall. Lorne Michaels.

Thanks for the topic, Blair! What I was going to talk about was the cool Star Wars Lego computer game I played all weekend. So instaed of interesting maybe 3 people, I would have an audience of one.