SELIG DELAY ON STEROIDS AND BOWMAN BENEFITS MLB
By Murray Chass
December 24, 2017
What did Bud Selig know about steroids and when did he know it? What did the former commissioner know about Bob Bowman’s bad behavior and when did he know about it?
By no means am I equating Bowman’s behavior with steroids, but Selig’s reaction to both provides grounds for solid speculation. See if you agree that there might be a link in Selig’s reaction to both.
First, I have to explain my reference to Bowman’s behavior. As Major League Baseball’s president of media and business, Bowman was a digital genius and made billions of dollars for M.L.B. and its 30 club owners.
Bowman, for example, developed a …
Keep reading...
NEW OWNERS, SAME OLD GAME
By Murray Chass
December 17, 2017
Not to disparage Derek Jeter, but it’s unlikely that he has ever read anything George Santayana ever wrote. Surely, though, he is familiar with Yogi Berra.
Whether or not Berra uttered any of his infamous Yogiisms when he and Jeter spent time together with the Yankees, the shortstop and captain might have heard Yogi’s “it’s like déjà vu all over again.”
Santayana, the late 19th Century and early 20th Century American writer and philosopher, wrote something that fits with Berra’s observation:
“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
The history we’re talking about here is the history of the Miami Marlins, the team of which Jeter is …
Keep reading...
CLARK, 7-FOR-7, CLOBBERS MILLER AGAIN
By Murray Chass
December 11, 2017
There is nothing like the Baseball Hall of Fame, or more precisely the people who run the Hall of Fame. They are a joke, a farce, a disgrace, a travesty, a humiliation. You get the idea. If Jane Forbes Clark didn’t own the place, she would have been booted out the back door years ago, banished in a cloud of shame.
Clark, who inherited her fortune, and her cronies held their latest election Sunday, and the board-appointed 16-man electorate put Jack Morris and Alan Trammell in the Hall.
And for the seventh time in seven tries, these addle-brained voters succeeded in keeping Marvin Miller out of the Clark asylum. That has been Clark’s primary goal for three decades, and the board-appointed voters seem to get better at it with each success.
Ten years ago Miller asked that he no longer be put on a Hall ballot, but Hall officials ignored him, just as their voters had. It’s our ball, they said in effect, and we’ll play with it when we want.
In Sunday’s election, Miller received …
Keep reading...