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For example, proposing to contract the Twins? I think we may need to look at the Brewers instead, who are consistant losers year in and year out.
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The proposed contraction of the Twins had nothing to do with on-field competitiveness. Montreal was a drain to the league and in order to get rid of one team, you needed to contract a second one. Carl Pohlad, owner of the Twins, was willing to get bought out, especially after a new stadium proposal fell through.
Only teams without new facilities were on the chopping block. Milwaukee was safe because of its new publicly-funded stadium and modest profits. Any city with a new stadium was safe.
It would be very short-sighted for the league to contract teams on the basis of on-field performance. Selig was looking at long-term financial projections on the basis of ownership stability (Montreal didn't even have an owner), ballpark revenues, and media demographics.
As for supporing policies that would help Milwaukee, I don't see why that's necessarily a problem. Milwaukee is the second smallest market in MLB. Helping one small market team (through increased revenue sharing) helps them all. Isn't one of your complaints about payroll disparity?
People act as though the Yankees won all 26 of their championships in the last 10 years. Fact is, there have always been haves and have-nots. Combine the number of championships between the Yankees and Cardinals, and you cover almost one-third of the seasons ever played in MLB history. Add in the Athletics and Red Sox (who won a decent share of championships in their early years) and you have almost half of the World Series Championships going to just four franchises.
Today, there's a lot more variety. In the last seven years alone, we've had seven different World Series champions: New York in 2000, Arizona in 2001, Anaheim in 2002, Florida in 2003, Boston in 2004, Chicago in 2005, St. Louis in 2006, etc. I'm not sure that's ever happened before in baseball. We might go a full decade with no repeat champion.
Small market teams can finally compete. Oakland advanced to the ALCS last year. Minnesota won the AL Central. Florida won a World Series in 2003. Cleveland came within a couple of games of winning the AL Central in 2005. The entire NL West was still in the playoff hunt as late as September 15th. The NL Central race came down to the final day of the season. There's been a ton of excitement. In the so-called good old days, you knew who the playoff teams were going to be by the end of July.
You mention the strike of 1994 - which the Montreal owner supported, by the way - yet you ignore the almost-strike of 2002. We came right down to the wire until Selig struck an owner-friendly deal, thereby securing labor peace without a work stoppage. I think 2002 cancels out 1994. There's no way the game would have survived a second strike.
I know the perception is always going to exist that Selig is a bad commissioner. But the empirical evidence simply doesn't support that contention. Not even close. Now it's possible that the game has improved in spite of him, not because of him. And I'm willing to accept that possibility. I just think we're in denial if we think the game is in decline. The record attendance figures, record revenues, and record broadcasting rights would beg to differ.