Is it possible to pick a favorite in the looming bonus battle between Alex Rodriguez and the New York Yankees? I don’t mean who the likely winner would be but who, in your opinion, the winner should be.

I admit it’s hard to root for either one, but if there is a grievance and an arbitration hearing, someone’s going to win and someone’s going to lose. Don’t base your opinion on what the arbitrator, Frederic Horowitz, might do; arbitrators are completely unpredictable. Ask baseball officials and club owners. They have lost significant cases they were certain they were going to win, free agency, for example.

I’ve thought about it and without seeing the contract and how it is worded, I can’t predict a winner. And if there was a way both sides could lose, I’d be for that to happen. But one of them is going to win so whom would I like to see in that position?

I would go for …

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Since I often disagreed with Bud Selig when he was commissioner – his linking the outcome of the All-Star game to homefield advantage for the World Series is one example I found particularly disagreeable – it’s only fair that I should establish a similar position with the new commissioner. No matter how good Rob Manfred may be, there is no way he can get through his tenure without doing something with which I would disagree.

It hasn’t taken long. Reading a brief account of an interview Manfred had with reporters in Chicago last week, I found problems with a couple of Manfred’s views. I will get into those but not until I raise an issue Manfred has not talked about but would do well to undertake: minority hiring.

I bring it up now because of a telephone call from a former player, who had just read that the Milwaukee Brewers hired Craig Counsell to replace Ron Roenicke as their manager.

Prompted by the call, I did some research and I found that …

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Perhaps the best a drug addict or an alcoholic can hope for is a sympathetic soul. No one could ever mistake Arte Moreno for a sympathetic soul. Think of a term for someone 180 degrees from a sympathetic soul and that’s Arte Moreno.

Moreno is the owner of the Angels, the team that plays in Anaheim, Calif., but Moreno renamed the Los Angeles Angels, hijacking the geographic designation of another team, the Dodgers. Moreno took that step for financially selfish reasons, figuring he would benefit from marketing endeavors using Los Angeles.

In retrospect, though, his stealing another team’s name pales in comparison to his treatment of Josh Hamilton, the player he foolishly gave $125 million to when the outfielder was a free agent after the 2012 season.

The only person more foolish was …

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