Make It a Really Happy Opening Day: Fire Bud Selig

It seems that an issue near and dear to my heart is getting some major play by national publications. Forbes Magazine and the New York Daily News are calling for Major League Baseball to can Commissioner Bud Selig, who has run the sport into the ground since he took the helm in 1992. If you don't believe how bad of a job he has done, look at the television ratings for the World Series for a point of reference. 13,635,000 tuned into the marquee game last year. The year before Selig took the reigns, almost 36 Million people thought that the Fall Classic was must see TV. The graph of viewership, a good barometer of relevancy of what really matters in American pop culture, looks like a the stock exchange in recent months - plummeting to new low after new low.

Bud Selig is the George W Bush of Major League Baseball Commissioners. The ironic thing about that is that Selig beat out W for the post back then. Selig was just about as bad of an owner as has done as commish. The Milwaukee Brewers were perennial cellar dwellers when the Selig family owned the club, but the team's fate changed last season by making the playoffs after his daughter sold the club. Hardly surprising to baseball observers.

The national press seems to be fixated on the steroid scandal. Everyone who followed baseball the last decade knew it was a problem well before the headlines came. The commissioner's office called Jose Canseco a liar when he wrote a shocking exposé of the sport. Just a year later, Canseco wrote a follow up book after his allegations were confirmed called "Vindicated".

Founder of Forbes Magazine Steve Forbes writes today:

With spring in the air, we can all look forward to some baseball to help us take our minds off of our troubles.

But we could enjoy ourselves more if Major League Baseball would send commissioner Bud Selig to the showers for good. His mishandling of the steroid scandals has been a disaster, a classic case of managerial incompetence.

While New York Daily News chimes in:

Remember when the crack of a bat and the pop of a fastball into a catcher's mitt were among the purest sounds you could hope to hear on a warm spring day? Truth resided in their resonance: You heard them and knew, without thinking or seeing, that those producing such a glorious melody had done so through honest honing of their craft.

Steroids are hardly the only problem in the sport. There are very few day games anymore, and even the sacred Saturday afternoon games have been replaced for the most part because of a national television deal. Prices skyrocket, players' salaries escalate and Selig has the gall the pay himself nearly $20 million a year in salary. He once ended a game in a tie which led to him changing the rules for the All-Star game. More perplexing was when he expanded the league and then tried to contract it a few years later.

If Barack Obama can call on the resignation of the General Motors, can't he do the same for the nation's national pastime? It is time for a new regime in Major League Baseball offices. Just don't select George W Bush, please.