If you’ve been following the Major League Baseball lockout, you’ve no doubt seen the defining photo of the fiasco.
There was Rob Manfred, caught on camera practicing his golf swing at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., last Tuesday. The MLB commissioner fiddled while Rome burned.
Manfred swinging a make-believe golf club during a lull in the negotiations should not be a big deal. Except that it is. Because it was just another in a series of PR gaffes by Manfred and his MLB soldiers.
Even if you watched Manfred’s news conference later that day, you might not have picked up on a telling moment. The New York Post’s Ken Davidoff, who is retiring from covering baseball, asked Manfred a question. In response, Manfred made reference to Davidoff’s past criticisms of him and said that he’ll really miss the writer. Manfred’s response dripped with sarcasm and anger. It was not exactly the time or the place for the commissioner to take a shot at a reporter.
In early January, the MLB Network fired correspondent Ken Rosenthal, who’s one of baseball’s biggest news-breakers and most-seasoned reporters. Rosenthal, who was with the network for 13 years and provided it with needed weight, was fired because he vocalized his disagreement with the way Manfred handled the 2020 MLB season during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a recent column on Manfred in The Athletic, Rosenthal wrote some of the most telling words about the current state of the game: “The owners are so intent on a zero-sum victory, so cavalier about the possibility of missing games, they do not even care how fans might interpret their actions.”
Ditto for Manfred.
And how can we forget Manfred’s bright, shining moment when he called the World Series Trophy — known officially as The Commissioner’s Trophy — a “piece of metal.” Three-time World Series champion Jon Lester responded with fire.
“That’s somebody that has never played our game. You play for a reason, you play for that piece of metal. I’m very proud of the three that I have,” Lester said. “If that’s the way he feels, then he needs to take his name off the trophy.”
And therein lies the root of the problem. The commissioner is supposed to act “in the best interests of baseball.” But Manfred, whose salary is $11 million a year, acts only in the best interest of the baseball owners.
A lot of smart people in the game don’t think Manfred even likes baseball.
Tennis great Andre Agassi, to his everlasting regret, once filmed a TV commercial for a camera called the Canon Rebel. Agassi stepped out of a white Lamborghini, lowered his sunglasses, and uttered the words, “Image is everything.” In this day and age, it’s even more true.
And Manfred will long regret some of his words and images. On Feb. 10, for example, he said: “I see missing games as a disastrous outcome for this industry.” And yet, here we are.
But it’s his actions — or rather, non-actions — that hurt the game the most. Remember this: baseball is in a lockout, imposed by the owners. When the lockout began in December, Manfred called it a “defensive” lockout, designed to prevent another midseason strike, as happened in 1994. Manfred said he wanted to jumpstart meaningful negotiations. And yet the owners waited 43 days to make their next offer.
The long fuse was lit for Manfred’s “disastrous outcome.”
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March 05, 2022 at 07:45PM
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