More from Dave Kindred's interview with Bud Selig:

TSN: Do you believe more than eight teams are in trouble? Selig: I'll stand with my six to eight. Maybe people will understand when, God forbid, teams can't make their payrolls. Why in life do you have to wait until something gets that bad before you do something about it?

TSN: Isn't that what revenue sharing is about?
Selig: Do the clubs understand that? Yes. Now, they do. Our first real revenue-sharing meeting was the roughest two or three days any of us had ever gone through.

It was horrible. It was about breaking this chain of no revenue sharing. Think of the wonderful vision of George Halas and the Maras and Bert Bell and Pete Rozelle and the Rooneys. All those NFL pioneers understood that these were your partners. That took a lot of vision. It took an absence of arrogance. It took an absence of selfishness.

It took people who cared about their sport more than they cared about themselves. This is a very rare thing in today's world.

TSN: And baseball lacked that?
Selig: We have people like that. John Fetzer, John Galbreath, Phil Wrigley, Gussie Busch, Tom Yawkey. But as things evolved we were more inclined to let selfishness and myopic views dominate rather than, as Pete Rozelle used to say, "Think league."

What changed for us in the late '80s and early '90s was the stunning difference in revenue because of local broadcast. In the 21st century, when you try to keep franchises in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and New York, L.A. or Chicago, you have this stunning difference.

You can't be healthy, then, without salary restraint and revenue sharing. The Maras, Bell and Rozelle were so smart they created a revenue-sharing structure from the start that saved them all. What's wrong with that?

Where do I start? I have never read anything that would lead me to think that Phil Wrigley and Gussie Busch cared more about the game than the cared about themselves. All they cared about was how much money they could make selling beer and gum. If they're baseball teams won, fine, and if they didn't, as long as people came out to the ball game, they were happy. They were not men of vision.

But the thing I really want to focus on is the last paragraph, where Bud says, "You can't be healthy, then, without salary restraint and revenue sharing." That statement there is the crux of all the problems in baseball. It's the crux of the large-small market battles, as well as the owner-player battles. I don't think anyone objects to revenue sharing. What two of the three groups object to is salary restraint. Players don't want salary restraint. They feel the market should set the salaries, and I agree. Large market owners don't really want salary restraint, because they need to bring in the big name players to draw fans to support the level of revenue they need. The group that wants restraint is Bud Selig's group; owners of small market teams that are too inept to create a winner with a smaller amout of revenue. Bud wants to put enough up enough roadblocks on the big clubs so that it's as easy for his Brewers to win as it is for the Yankees.

The problem is, it will never be easy for the Brewers as long as they are mis-managed. They do a poor job drafting and trading. The get low on-base players who strikeout a lot. If they drafted high on-base guys who put the ball in play, they would probably be an interesting and competitive team. They may not win, but they'd be fun to watch. And if you are competitive, luck will eventually put you over the top. Which brings me to another point:

TSN: Do you think the players association doesn't want to deal with any of what you see as problems?
Selig: Let's be honest about it. The status quo is what they want. From their perspective, I understand. I'm not even critical. But we just can't afford the status quo. The status quo is not producing.

In the last seven World Series, not one game has been won by a team that wasn't in the top quartile of payroll. Not one game. Forget a Series, not one game. We need to deal with this.

Selig is confusing probability with reality. Just because something hasn't happened doesn't mean it can't happen. The last two years, the Yankees were very lucky to get by the A's. The A's had better teams both years. The A's could easily have won the World Series the last two years. The A's were unlucky. But the A's have a lousy fan base, play in a lousy stadium, have another team to compete with across the bay, and manage to win. And they do it, not with tons of money, but with front office smarts. The Brewers have the owner in the commissioner's office manipulating things to make it easier for them to win, and they still are horrible.

Bud Selig is the problem with baseball. He has needed to form a partnership between the individual owners, and between the owners and the players. He's failed at both, because he's not believable. It's time for a new commissioner, payed equally by both the owners and the players, who's job it is to protect the best interests of the game, and to bring all parties together. I know it's not going to happen soon, but maybe when Bud screws this up again, everyone will come to their senses.