Baseball Hall of Fame News....

In baseball news, Bud "Bud" Selig gets voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by some committee.  Here is how I summarize the Selig Administration:

1. He presided over the sport when he and his bosses, the owners, looked the other way when steroid and PED usage ran amok among all of major and minor league baseball.
2. He then took credit for ending the "scourge of steroids and PED usage" only when the United States Congress began holding hearings on the matter and threatened to "look into" MLB's anti-trust exemption.
3. Completely over-reacted when an All-Star Game ended in a tie and decreed that, henceforth, home field advantage in the World Series would be given to the team whose league won the All-Star Game. (Honestly, did it really bother anyone when that game ended in a tie?)  Curiously, on the same weekend that Bud's election to the HOF was announced, this particular legacy of his was scuttled by MLB.
4. He presided over a labor stoppage that covered two seasons and led to the cancellation of the World Series in 1994.
5. Presided over an era that saw gross revenues for MLB increase to $9.5 billion (that's with a "B", folks).

In the end, point number five, trumps the preceding four points, so Bud gets a plaque.  And as far as points one and two are concerned, with Bud now in the Hall, there is no way that guys like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and other stars of the "PED Era" should be kept out.

To be fair, he also saw MLB expand to thirty teams, and introduced wild cards into the equation of baseball's pennant races.  Some purists will no doubt bemoan this forever, but it has made baseball more exciting theater, and that has also played a big part in producing those billions and billions of dollars for the Lodge Brothers who own those thirty teams.

Hey, I love the Baseball Hall of Fame.  It's one of may favorite places to visit, but Bowie Kuhn and now Bug Selig have plaques in the place, and Marvin Miller does not, and that tarnishes the place a good bit in my mind.

One final comment.   As I usually do when posting The Grandstander, I looked for a picture of Bud to post, and when you go to Google Images, you get an amazing array of pictures of Bud Selig.  I chose the one that you see at the top, but it was a difficult choice from among these other shots of the Commish Emeritus:

I hope that they choose a similar image for the bronze plaque that will hang on the wall in Cooperstown.