Bud Selig is destroying baseball...

There are a lot of reasons that people point to when discussing the poor decision making of Bud Selig. His biggest PR busts are likely the all star game tie and his handling of the Expos, before he shipped them off the the capitol. My biggest issue with Bud is inability to respect the traditions of baseball, when history is so important to the game itself.

I think his biggest downfall was how he handled steroids, before and after the public outing of so many cherished MLB athletes. He will likely play dumb to his death, but I find it hard to believe that Bud had no idea there was any roids in the locker rooms, when it sounds like a lot of players knew what was going on. Not to mention, he had million$ of reasons to play dumb, when Big Mac, Slammin Sammy and Bonds were breaking records left and right. What makes it so obvious that Selig didn't want to clean up the game as soon as possible, was his lame excuse of a testing program that allowed players a year of testing with no punishment before the "real" programs debut in 2005. What makes it even more interesting, is that Selig only "fought" for these new testing procedures after the public Balco scandal of 2003. This seams less that Selig had no idea and more that he felt there was nothing he could do to hide it from the public eye. His lack of initiative and decision to let steroids run their course will forever tarnish the golden years of baseball for me, watching Barry Bonds in my home park and believing that I was watching the greatest player to ever live. He either is a coward or stupid, neither strong traits for a commissioner. He will forever be the man in charge during the asterisk years, what a sad feat. 

So since Selig has to make poor decisions every year, this time around he decides last minute to add a 2nd wild card team for each league. I don't care if every other sport has at least 6 teams in the playoffs from each league, because none of them have 162 games to earn that spot or have the tradition that baseball has. It was an easy decision for Bud though, as we all know he loves cash and this will basically earn the league more playoff revenue. What is so repulsive is that the two wild card teams now get a 1 game playoff to decide their fates. 1 game, really? If there is one thing that EVERYONE knows about baseball, it is that 1 game cannot measure what team is better, even at that moment in time. This basically makes it a series of my ace vs. your ace. To make it better, the next year there will be a 3 game series, which likely will mean that the division winning playoff teams will have to wait 3-4 days to play their first playoff game. They ruined a perfect format that was exciting, for a unbalanced poorly thought out 5 team wait it out playoff. 

Also, lets not forget that Selig was commissioner during the great strike of 1994. Being the businessman and former owner that he was, Selig sided with the owners and allowed baseball to stop playing. Just to showcase how much Selig was in the owners pockets, they gave him full power on labor negotiations after giving the boot to former commissioner Fay Vincent. 

You can't put all the blame on Bud for all these happenings, but he was the head of baseball during so many poor moments in baseball history. It is his job to protect the legacy of baseball and to help grow it, both of which I can say in confidence he has not. It's too bad, because baseball has so much to offer the future generations, but it will be hard to explain why an entire generation is missing from its records and history books.