Andre Dawson was a free agent after the 1986 season. He had played for the Montreal Expos for 11 years, their artificial turf had wrecked his knees and he was ready to move to a team that played on grass. The Chicago Cubs were that team.
The Cubs, however, wouldn’t talk to him or his agent, Richard Moss. Try as they might, Moss and Dawson could not elicit an offer from the Cubs’ president, Dallas Green.
As the season approached, Moss and Dawson continued to pursue Green but to no avail. Finally, they tried a different tactic. They walked into the Cubs’ camp, handed Green a blank contract signed by Dawson. All Green had to do was fill in the salary blank and the All-Star outfielder was theirs.
With Chicago reporters well aware by now of the game that was playing out before them, Green felt trapped and knew he had to sign Dawson. He wrote in $500,000 (there would be an additional $150,000 if he avoided the disabled list before the All-Star break), an amount well under Dawson’s value, and the Cubs had a new right fielder.
As time went on, I learned that the game had a charade. Green all along wanted Dawson but needed an excuse to sign him. Why? The owners were engaged in illegal collusion against free agents, refusing to sign them so they would be forced to stay with their 1986 teams and accept less money than what would have been available in an honest market.
Now why am I recalling a 30-year-old story? The reason is Bud Selig. In 1986, Selig was the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and leader of the owners’ labor policy committee. As such, he was instrumental in designing the owners’ illegal collusion scheme that affected Dawson, among many others.
Thirty years later Dawson has a unique opportunity. As a member of a 16-man committee, he gets to vote Sunday on whether or not Selig should be in the Hall of Fame. I don’t know how Dawson feels about the matter, but how ironic it would be if Selig fell one vote short of the needed 12 votes and Dawson did not vote for him.
This is what the Hall’s news release said about Selig:
“Allan H. ‘Bud’ Selig was Baseball’s ninth commissioner, serving as acting commissioner starting in 1992 before being named commissioner in 1998. Selig oversaw two rounds of expansion, the creation of Wild Card playoff teams and interleague play as well as the creation of the World Baseball Classic.”
This is what the Hall didn’t say. There’s a lot more here than Selig or the Hall would like.
Realistically, I don’t think Selig will need Dawson’s vote. The committee is stacked in his favor, just as committees that have denied Marvin Miller’s election have been stacked against him. Hall officials have never been known for their fairness.
What do I think? I think Selig should not even be allowed in the building on Main Street in Cooperstown until he acknowledges that (1) collusion occurred and (2) he participated in it. Even then, I do not believe Selig belongs in. In his 22 years as commissioner Selig did a lot of admirable things. But the bad he did outweighs the good.
Start with collusion.
“I don’t call it collusion; I call it theft,” Fay Vincent, who preceded Selig as commissioner, said in a telephone conversation Friday. “That’s what it was. The owners stole $280 million plus interest from the players. It is the defining theme of the relationship between the players and the owners.”
Vincent, who was not yet in baseball when Selig and his co-conspirators hatched their plot, is one of only three people connected to Major League Baseball who have acknowledged that collusion existed. Richard Ravitch did so after he became chief labor negotiator. Bill Giles, former owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, wrote about his involvement in his book.
Giles also was instrumental in the union’s grievances over collusion. He took notes on his futile attempt to sign Lance Parrish, and union lawyers subpoenaed them.
Then there were remarks made to Vincent that he related. He said Walter Haas Jr., owner of the Oakland Athletics at the time, told him when he was commissioner not to doubt collusion. Haas, Vincent said, told him he had participated in it, much to his regret.
Then there was Jerry Reinsdorf, chairman of the Chicago White Sox, who told Vincent about a previous collusion in the early 1980s. “That one went more smoothly and was more successful,” Vincent quoted Reinsdorf as saying.
But only silence and denial from Selig, who has outdone Pete Rose, who lied and denied for 15 years that he bet on baseball games.
Selig also was silent on the steroids scourge he did nothing about and, as a result, was very likely responsible for greater use of performance-enhancing drugs than any other individual. Selig would strongly scoff at that suggestion, but after steroids burst into public view and he was asked why he never did anything about them his response always was “I didn’t know.”
He said that once to me when we were talking about steroids. However, I subsequently learned his denial was not legitimate. In June of 1991 Commissioner Vincent issued a memo to clubs alerting them to the Federal law banning steroids. This was a tiny part of the lengthy memo:
“The possession, sale, or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance by major league players and personnel is strictly prohibited. Those involved in the possession, sale, or use of any illegal drug or controlled substance are subject to discipline by the commissioner and risk permanent expulsion from the game.”
There was plenty more where that came from, but having received that memo as the Brewers’ owner, it was impossible for him to say he didn’t know about steroids (unless he didn’t read the memo, shutting his eyes instead, which is what he did to steroid use.) Once he could no longer deny knowing about steroids, Selig became a convert and went after everybody he could. But even there he failed.
Against the advice of many of his top advisers, he hired George Mitchell, a former U.S. senator, to investigate steroids in baseball. Despite millions and millions of dollars, Mitchell learned virtually nothing more than what he got from known drug distributors who agreed to talk to Mitchell to be treated more leniently by authorities.
Selig, though, used the 2007 report to show how serious he was about cleansing baseball of steroids. His attack on amphetamines was equally questionable.
As the Brewers’ owner, Selig was in the team’s clubhouse every day. He saw the bowl of little green pills the clubhouse attendants kept filled. He very likely saw players scoop up a handful on their way to the field.
However, it wasn’t until he was battered at a Congressional committee hearing in 2008 that Selig took steps to get rid of greenies.
Then there is the Mark McGwire story.
In 1998, during the McGwire-Sammy Sosa home run extravaganza, a reporter who knew about such things (I didn’t), spotted a bottle of androstenedione, a steroids precursor, in McGwire’s locker. I quietly asked Selig if he was going to do anything about it. Selig, who was fond of McGwire, replied, “I’m not going to do anything to hurt Mark.”
In 2010, when he returned to baseball as a coach with St. Louis, McGwire admitted that he had used steroids.
Selig is one of 10 candidates on the HOF ballot du jour, the first of four representing different eras.
Selig wasn’t on the ballot the first time he was eligible, and I wrote about the heavy-handed pressure the writers making up the ballot had endured.
The Hall president, Jeff Idelson, who used to be a decent guy, assumed who the writers were who had told me what had happened at the committee meeting at which Selig failed to make the cut.
Without any evidence, only questionable assumption, two good people were thrown off the committee.
Having made the ballot this year, Selig is a certainty to be elected. I don’t know what the rush is. Maybe Selig henchmen let the voting panel know that the 82-year-old Selig wants to make it before his induction becomes posthumous.
His candidacy, however, raises a question. Baseball writers, in their voting on players, have rejected some, including Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, as steroids cheats. Shouldn’t Selig be rejected as a collusion cheat?