I decided to post this card out of order just because I like it so much. It is the latest card I've done, and I passed up about 10 others, but I will post them at some point.
At first, in the mid '90's, I liked Bud Selig. He gave us interleague play, so I finally had the chance to see National League teams play since my closest team was the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays. I kind of liked the wild card and was glad that expansion have my area the Rays. But I failed to see the long term complications. The interleague play made the All-Star game pointless, the Wild Card gave him the excuse to add another wild card slot and another round in the playoffs, and I like that expansion gave Tampa Bay a team, but why not just move the Marlins to Orlando (near Disney, maybe?), or at least put them in downtown Tampa, not in crappy St. Pete. The Marlins owners didn't want the team, and neither does the city, so the Rays owners could take the team off their hands, it would thrive in a better location, and an expansion team could've went to a city that would like one like say, Norfolk, Las Vegas, Charlotte, or Brooklyn.
Selig has added so many gimmicks to the game that it's a shell of what it once was in '91 (Fay Vincent's last year). Let's ignore the fact that he turned a blind eye to PEDs and then said that HE wanted stricter drug testing. Let's ignore the fact that he colluded in the late '80's. Let's ignore the fact that he lifted Steinbrenner's ban and let MLB become the first sport to lose a postseason to a strike and the fact that there STILL isn't a salary cap. Selig tried to do a good thing by realigning the divisions, but the reason he needed to do it was the Wild Card. He should've kept the leagues in 2 divisions and either had top 4 records regardless of division make playoffs, or let top 2 teams from each division in, and also had to sign a contract that he wouldn't add any more playoff teams, rounds, or expansion unless a 100% vote by owners and a player rep from each team.
Interleague play shouldn't have happened. The All-Star game wouldn't be a joke, and players would want to play. As for the ASG tie in '02, I'll say what I said while watching the game: The AL has Freddy Garcia pitching. Call Lou Piniella and ask his teams skipper if it's ok to pitch him more than 2-3 innings. If it's ok, call the NL pitchers manager, and ask same thing, if yes, problem solved. If either say no, have a player who already pitched come back in (if ok with managers, of course). Again, problem solved. Solution 3: just have a position player hit. I just offered 3 solutions to Seligs problem, and I can swear to you that I came up with them in '02 while watching the game. Selig decides to end game in a tie, and to make him look better and make up for interleague play cheapening the game, he lets the winner get home field advantage in the World Series.
Then Bud gives us the WBC (is it still around, btw?). A good idea, but nobody wanted to play because it was during Spring Training. Why not do what Peter Gammons (a great candidate for Commish) suggested and make the season start a few weeks earlier and just make the All-Star break 2 weeks long and play the WBC then? Or just play in in November? Or push for baseball to be back in the Olympics?
I realize hindsight may be making me a harsh critic of Selig, but some of these problems you could see coming. MLB playoffs are beginning to look like the NBAs where they are 3 months long and 6 or 7 rounds, and one of these years a scrub team will win the last Wild Card and beat the Favorite to win the World Series and we're going to see 2 ok teams in the playoffs instead of the 2 best teams. Meanwhile, Selig is sitting in his retirement home thinking "Ha! They can't change anything I've done!" I don't know if the game can get back to where it was in 1991. I would like to think it could.
So I decided to make this card to point out all of the damage that I think Selig has done to the game. I'm sure lots of people will disagree and that's ok. I tried to fit everything on 1 card back, but decided to make it a book card so it would fit. I really like the idea of the set and really want to find cards of the diabetics in the set (Jason Johnson, Sam Fuld, and Buddy Carlyle) I probably won't get too many more packs of Update, so maybe I'll get some when they appear on COMC, or if you have any you don't want, feel free to send them to me. I'm hoping they continue the insert set next year.
It will be back to normal cards next post. Thanks for checking out my blog.
-Jeremy
