Maybe the game Selig has changed is two leagues dominated by mediocre teams. But so are the two conferences of the NFL, and it sure beats enduring big-market dynasties.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Bud Selig, whose announced retirement as baseball commissioner after this season has been accompanied by shrugs or recriminations from many fans and media members, made a game of competitive disparity and payroll imbalance fairer.
That should be his legacy, rather than the many bad developments that showed how tightly his hands were tied by the MLB Players Association, the most powerful labor union in sports.
Nevertheless, Selig convinced a quarrelsome group of owners to make significant changes for the good of the many at the expense of the few, using the relationships he forged as the former owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and, particularly, the respect he held for other owners and enjoyed from them.
As Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci noted, Selig cooked up a stew of innovations – a "competitive balance" tax, increased revenue sharing, limits on draft expenditures and international scouting that led to what many term a balance of weakness.
Critics look at Selig's measures and call them halfway, and they look at his tenure and call it too cautious. But they were enough to convince this critic to change my opinion of him radically.
Baseball doesn't have a hard salary cap, so the inequities, although reduced, will continue. Selig, however, dealt, just as politicians in this country used to, with the art of the possible.
The result might be mediocrity as Verducci, one of the country's most respected baseball writers, contends, but from the Indians' perspective, it looks like contention.
This past Sunday morning the Indians had a 62-60 record and were 4 1/2 games out of the second wild card spot, which is exactly where they were after 122 games last season.
"The way baseball is set up, with some of the so-called haves and have-nots, whatever you want to call it -- the disparity, you're never going to please everybody. I think Mr Selig has done a really good job of getting things done because that's really hard," said Indians manager Terry Francona, a big Selig fan. "You can be the smartest guy in the world, and if you can't get stuff done, it doesn't really help."
What Francona most respects about Selig is that he loves baseball. "He's a big baseball fan. That's what I most admire about him," Francona said.
It's important that Selig not only loves baseball, but he came to love it in Milwaukee. This gave him the perspective of a small-market fan and later a small-market owner. He wanted all the fans of all the teams to enjoy baseball, so, over time, by building a consensus, he made it possible for more of them to savor at least the chance of postseason baseball.
Selig at worst shares the blame with the intractable players union for the cancellation of the 1994 World Series and for the trashing by the steroid era of the most revered records.
The plan to give the All-Star Game winner home-field advantage in the World Series, however, was all his. (Everybody boots one now and then.)
"(Selig) led us through some kind of tumultuous times. He brought baseball through those tumultuous times in a pretty healthy place," said Francona.
Selig cared for 28 teams besides the Yankees and Red Sox. ESPN's obsession with them has become almost as ridiculous as political commentator and baseball fancier George Will's argument that fans of other teams got "derivative glory" when their players got thrown in front of the Brinks truck George Steinbrenner was driving to higher and higher payrolls.
"The Yankees ... are simply irreplaceable as carriers of a tradition that lends derivative glory to teams that compete against them,'' Will gushed.
Such a subservient notion – "Thank you for letting me share your pine tar, milord" -- is not shared by anyone outside Yankees fans and Will.
Selig probably agrees with former Tribe manager Mike Hargrove, who once said, "All baseball is local. You don't see Indians' fans wearing jerseys of players from other teams very often."
True, but you do see fans of those teams wearing them because good seats are still available at Progressive Field.
Because of the second wild card, a Selig innovation, teams as disparate as the moderate payrolled Indians and Rays on one hand, and the big-spending Tigers and Yankees on the other are scrambling for playoff spots. Verducci dimmed the bright flare of hope this creates by pointing out that only the Cardinals of 2006 actually won it all with a close to .500 record of 83-79.
But once is enough to let others dream of a repeat. A single hot month of September got the Tribe in as the first wild card last year.
Anyway, why should mediocrity in baseball be bad and a 9-7 team winning the Super Bowl (the 2011 New York Giants) be good?
Mediocrity beats servility any day.