On the second day of 1977 Bowie Kuhn, then the commissioner of Major League Baseball, levied a one-year suspension against Ted Turner, the irrepressible owner of the Atlanta Braves. Earlier Kuhn fined Turner and the Braves $10,000. Kuhn had found Turner guilty of tampering with a free agent, Gary Matthews, before he became a free agent. At a World Series cocktail party, Turner had told Bob Lurie, owner of the San Francisco Giants, for whom Matthews had played, that he, Turner, would get Matthews no matter what Lurie offered to pay him.

“I’m thankful he didn’t order me …

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Portrait of a $330 million player:

* Hitting .249 last season, Bryce Harper placed 97th among 139 major leaguers who qualified for the batting title.
* His .496 slugging percentage ranked 30th.
* He was ninth in on-base percentage with .393.
* His 34 home runs tied him for 16th.
* He drove in 100 runs, which were 15th.
* He drew a major league-most 130 walks, which explain his uncharacteristic standing in on-base percentage.

Bob Waterman of Elias Sports Bureau, who provided Harper’s standings, alertly pointed out that “Harper and his new teammate, Rhys Hoskins, had remarkably similar totals last season. The only real difference is that Harper draws an amazingly high number of walks (#1 in MLB) while Hoskins finished just outside the top ten in MLB (13th)” …

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On the same day last week I read two articles dealing with the state of Major League Baseball that presented totally opposite views. One view was offered by Commissioner Rob Manfred, the other by Ryan Zimmerman, veteran first baseman of the Washington Nationals. Had they presented their differing views on a public stage as in a public debate I would have declared Zimmerman the winner by a large margin.

Manfred would get points for being the first commissioner to invoke metric – specifically WAR – in his argument defending teams for not signing free agents, but I’d like to see the commissioner compute players’ WAR scores himself rather than have a staff member hand them to him on a sheet of paper.

Manfred was holding a news gathering in West Palm Beach, Fla., at the start of spring training. A major subject of reporters’ questions was the lagging pace of teams’ signing free agents. At the time barely half of the 164 free agents had signed contracts, and the unsigned players and their agents were beginning to wonder what was going on. Manfred wanted to be …

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