When the owners created the committee to search for the next commissioner, I noted that this was something of a middle finger to Bud Selig’s clearly preferred plan of anointing Rob Manfred his successor. Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times confirms that pretty darn clearly today.
Schmidt reports that Manfred’s candidacy — or, at the very least, his coronation — is being opposed by Jerry Reinsdorf, the Chicago White Sox owner. It’s surprising inasmuch as Reinsdorf has always been Selig’s number one ally among owners. Now, however, he’s working behind the scenes to thwart the one thing every king would like to have, and that’s the right to name his heir. Seems that Reinsdorf thinks this is a democracy!
“What I have said about Rob is none of your business,” Mr. Reinsdorf said in a telephone interview, interjecting an expletive.
Mr. Reinsdorf said he “had never said a bad word about Bud,” who he said “was the game’s best commissioner.” But he said that he believed that the owners — not Mr. Selig — should be in charge of picking the next one.
Or, as Schmidt characterizes it, Reinsdorf’s case is that “unlike owners who have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in their teams, Mr. Selig has no ownership in the game after he retires.”
All of which is understandable. And a nice reminder that, no matter what people like to think about the Commissioner of Baseball, he is not a leader as we usually think of that term. He’s just a CEO who answers to a powerful board of directors and serves at their pleasure.
