They must be playing a World Baseball Classic somewhere that we don’t know about. Players, after all, are being injured, and that’s what happens when they have the Classic, isn’t it?

The first global major league tournament was staged in 2006, and it prompted complaints from major league personnel that players were suffering injuries unnecessarily.

That is, pitchers were pitching competitively before they were ready and hurting their arms, and other players were hurting various parts of their bodies because, they, too, were playing not only prematurely but also in games that shouldn’t be played in March.

The response was typical to something that was new and different. The World Baseball Classic altered the familiar pattern of spring training, and some people, fans included, just couldn’t adjust. But this spring the Classic is in the middle of its four-year hiatus, and darn if players aren’t getting hurt nonetheless.

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Two rules I must have seen on one of those clever office signs somewhere:

Rule #1: I am the boss and I make the rules.

Rule #2: I am the boss and I don’t have to follow the rules.

I have been in Bud Selig’s Milwaukee office only once and can’t say I’ve noticed that sign, but it must be posted there somewhere. Rule #2, after all, seems to have prevailed in the commissioner’s appointment Saturday of Joe Torre as baseball’s executive vice president for baseball operations.

It’s been obvious for a few months that Selig wanted to give Torre the job, which opened up last June when he removed Jimmie Lee Solomon from it.

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Bud Selig has many stories he can tell about George Steinbrenner, but he often tells one in particular. It’s about the time the Yankees’ owner was in Milwaukee to watch his team play Selig’s Brewers.

As often happened with Steinbrenner, something was going on that the reporters traveling with the Yankees wanted to talk to him. Mickey Morabito, the Yankees’ media relations director, sought out Steinbrenner where he was sitting and told him the writers wanted to talk to him.

“Tell them I’m not here,” Selig recalls Steinbrenner telling Morabito.

The only problem with that idea, Selig always says laughing, was that Steinbrenner was sitting in Selig’s glass-enclosed box, which was next to the press box, where the reporters had a clear view of the Yankees’ owner.

Selig, now the commissioner, doesn’t have the same relationship with the sons of Steinbrenner as he had with George, and in Selig’s experience, the older one, Hank, is heard more than seen.

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