Bud Selig hates you. And you, and you, and definitely you.

Yep, the best baseball around is being played in sixteen regional sites this weekend, and Omaha next weekend. The MLB is a joke.

Damn it!

sixteen regional = eight super regional

Is Selig the most detested commissioner of all major sports in the last 50 years? Hard to argue otherwise.

Pete Rose would say Bartlett Giamatti.

Selig was dead to me when he turned a blind eye to steriods in the late ’90’s. Then he really pissed me off when he called that All Star game in ’02 I think it was. I was at a bar in Huntington Beach, really enjoying the sights and drinks, when all of a sudden the party was over. It was a good game. I can still remember Torii Hunter robbing Barry Bonds and Bonds then picking up Hunter and throwing over his shoulder.

most detested, most incompetent, most pathetic, most socially awkward…

I guess he’s taller than David Stern.

I always thought of MLB as that thing that wouldn’t die but should. One of those “well I’m at Pluckers & it isn’t football season so I wonder what it on the tv now.. hmm” sports.

I 100% disagree with you on the commissioner overturning a call. I don’t think a precedent should be set where MLB brass can step in “change” any aspect of a completed game. The game happened on the field when it happened. If the umpires overturned the call there, then fine. But once they’ve made the call, that should be it for 2 reasons.

1. This is the perfect storm of “overturnable” (last play that would have ended the game, clearly erroneous call, significant story b/c of the perfect game)…but what about all of the other plays that impact a game that umps get wrong? Would you have him overturn the call if it happened with only 1 out in the bottom of the 9th? And what about less historic outs that aren’t called correctly? Those outs were just as important to baseball as the “historic” ones. Making only these “perfect storm” plays reviewable changes the game on those plays, something I feel is not right. A guy gets screwed out of a no hitter in the 8th…well tough. It happens with 2 away in the 9th and all of a sudden it’s correctable. I don’t like that at all.

2. On a related point, umps should have incentive to get it right the first time (if it’s close and they know the review will come if they’re wrong, they will be more inclined to call it in such a way that the brass will correct them if wrong. But review of “landmark” plays could make the calls on those plays different. The umps have a job to call every play, and those calls should be made evenly throughout the game. Creating an incentive to call certain plays in a different manner is just not right in my opinion.

Don’t take the game out of the hands of the players and umps. Yeah, it results in an “injustice” once in a blue moon (like this one, the KC call, etc…), but I prefer that to the alternative. I don’t agree with Selig on much, but I agree with him on this – correcting this call is not his business.

Thanks for the update, bates. I couldn’t possibly care less what Major League Baseball does, but it’s nice to get an occasional reminder that it’s okay not to give a shit.

I guess we disagree. This is a perfect storm. Virtually impossible to replicate. If galarraga had given up a baserunner on the next batter, then I’m inclined to agree, but in this case, changing the call does not materially affect the game other than to erase the subsequent batter’s at bat from the record books.

In the long run, rather than having replay installed in the game, the umpires should just look at the jumbotron for a second after a particularily vigorous objection and make a snap decision, like in soccer. Zinedine Zidane got tossed from the last World Cup final because the referee looked up after missing the head butt, and basically went “Hey, you can’t do that….”

Horseshit, WeAreVince.

First of all, MLB has overturned calls before. Ask George Brett.

So this wouldn’t set a precedent, and even if it did, so what? The next time there’s a situation where a clearly incorrect call prevents the end of the game from immediately taking place then the Commissioner can overturn the call again. There is no hypothesizing about what would have happened in the game if the correct call had been made. There is no need to replay the rest of the game from any particular point, as they did in the Pine Tar Game, because the game would have been over.

Shouldn’t the Nationals and Jim Joyce be taking the heat on this? I know it is popular to bash Selig, but I just don’t see it here.

Jim Joyce and Armando Galarraga handled this between themsleves like straight up good dudes. It wasn’t a playoff game. It is what it is, and it is over.

Not to mention the precedent argument has merit because you know that the media would bang him over the head with it every time there was a prominent questionable call.

On the Washington side, they have to pay for that signing bonus somehow. I also think that this is attributing Machiavellian intelligence to baseball front office guys, who are more likely to be biting their fingernails about pitch counts.

Anyway, I don’t think either is in Seligs’ domain or is Selig’s fault in any way.

Perhaps not Selig’s fault or domain. His continuing to keep replay at a distance is, IMO.

Jayson Stark over at ESPN wrote a decent column about expanding replay in limited ways in baseball when this happened – http://lnk.nu/sports.espn.go.com/1bi0

And Huck, thanks for bringing up the Pine Tar Incident – if you hadn’t, I was gonna…

I’m in agreement on the dump that baseball takes on the fan. Like I’ve been saying, after already experiencing 2 WS wins with one occuring in spectaculr fashion what motivation do I have to sit through 162 4-hour snooze fests in the hopes of a playoff appearance and even less likely final victory.
The cost-reward analysis says I’m happier doing just about anything else.

A Shane Warne reference? Wow.

Concur.

MLB blows for a litany of reasons that I don’t have the energy to recount here. Bud Selig’s petulant ‘no’ on Joyce’s blown call is just another example of how the life has been sucked out of a great sport.

I can’t stand to watch MLB anymore – I watch the Horns when on TV and my son when he plays. That’s it.

I kind of liked the Nats bait and switch. I was able to get 6 tickets on Friday for the game that night for 99cents each!

I think the Nats should pay me to go to their games… a rough guestimate tells me that they are 24-1 when I have been to their games over the past 3 years. Friday night was my first game of 2010.

Whether it’s Selig’s domain or not is irrelevant. His defense that “it’s okay to make mistakes because we’ve always made mistakes” is what rankles.

If you want to make the case that this is why you should have expanded instant replay, then fine. But, this call did not effect the outcome of the game like Brett and the Pine Tar call did.

I think this would have 100% been used as a precedent by teams and the media to bitch about an ever expanding assortment of calls that tend to even out over the 162 games

I think shitting on Selig is just the lazy way to bitch about baseball.

100% agree on the Selig thing. Amazing how that dude snatches defeat from the jaws of victory every time.

As for the Strasburg call up, if there was a firestorm of controversy, I never heard it in DC. Folks have been speculating the 8th for a while here, given that they would probably want a Tuesday sell out and didn’t want the added pressure of a weekend game (drunker, rowdier fans).