Zachary Manprin sent me this link to a Dave Kindred interview with Selig. To read this, Selig makes you think he's had nothing to do with the labor problems of the last 30 years:

We showed the financial numbers to the clubs again in a meeting recently, left them up on the board, team by team. There wasn't a sound in the room. I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, these are the numbers that I've taken a fearful pounding over, that you submitted, that many bodies have had, that bankers have never raised questions about."

And I said, "Look, it's really competitive balance that we have to talk about. I don't think the average fan gives a damn whether a team has made money or lost money. It's, 'How does that affect the play on the field?' And, unfortunately, it's begun to affect play on the field. We can't ignore that."

So the last thing anybody wants is a work stoppage. But I don't think we have the option to ignore this. If I can fault baseball, I borrow a line my wife used to use. It's Scarlett O'Hara's line from Gone With the Wind -- a perfect repression mechanism: "I'll think about it tomorrow."

That's what we did. We did it in '76, in '80, in '81. Lee MacPhail, a great baseball man, said in '85, "We're fighting for the small markets. You can see the problem coming." We didn't do anything about it. In 1990, the same thing. Had a wonderful opportunity to address the problem. Didn't. In '94, we know what that was -- clubs attempting to change the system. So here we are today.

Now, Dave Kindred doesn't call him on any of this. First of all, plenty of people have questioned the numbers including Forbes. So Bud putting them on a blackboard doesn't add any veritas to them.

As for ignoring the problem in all those other years, there was no problem to ignore. This problem didn't arise until the national TV contract ran out in 1994. Up until that time, all teams shared enough money so everyone could afford 2 or 3 superstars. MacPhail may have seen it coming, but it took another 10 years to happen.

I was just reading Bud's biography on the MLB site, and while it mentions that he was "active in the governance of Major League Baseball during his tenure as President of the Milwaukee Brewers," it doesn't say that that activity was in labor relations. So if baseball was ignoring problems, Selig was right in the middle of it.

I find this interesting also:

TSN: Couldn't you take that local broadcast money and just divide it up among the clubs however you wanted?
Selig: No, revenue sharing is now a subject of bargaining with the players association. Do I agree? No. But we haven't wanted to go to court over that. Everybody keeps saying, "It's your revenue. Why don't you guys just do what you want?"

For years, Marvin Miller and Don Fehr (the players' last two executive directors) have said, "Why are you guys coming to us? Why should the players solve your problems? Do what you want to solve your problems. Share revenue anyway you want." Now things have changed. Now they want to talk about a different plan.

TSN: You mean, if the 30 owners sat down and said, "We've got $2 billion here; we're going to divide it up how we want," the players would have to pass on it?
Selig: Yes.

Well, the reason the players are involved is because the owners wanted revenue sharing to come out of the players' pockets. Remember the idea of a salary cap? Now, the players union is only really interested in protecting the interests of the very rich players, which is why they don't want to see the big market teams losing a lot of money to revenue sharing. But I'm sure they'll accept it as long as a cap isn't put on how much a player can make.

Bud's a great car salesman. You read this interview and think, "Gee, he makes sense." That's why you have to leave the showroom and think about it. Bud would kill free agency if he could. He'd love to go back to the days of the reserve clause forever. That's the only way he'll ever be able to make a winner out of the Brewers.