Baseball’s Commissioner Cares More About Politics Than About Fans
Commissioner Rob Manfred's power trip is an attack on the average baseball fan who simply wants to enjoy America's pastime and be left alone.
By Kyle Sammin
April 7, 2021
When baseball first created the office of commissioner, it was because the sport needed to restore integrity and trust. They placed one man, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, at the top of the game and had him rule with the interest of owners, players, and fans in mind.
It is not a democratic concept, but it served the game well for a while. Landis was far from perfect, but he made people trust the game again. Major League Baseball’s latest foray into partisan politics in Georgia diminishes that trust.
As in so many other areas of American life, leftist politics are crowding out everything else. Commissioners became the players’ enemy after the labor strife of the 1970s. The minor leagues soon became an afterthought, too.
Now, in acceding to the demands of woke capital, Commissioner Rob Manfred throws the fans overboard. Pulling the All-Star Game from Georgia in response to the recent voting law changes there shows that Manfred listens only to the powerful while thrusting baseball into the latest partisan fight and forcing fans to take sides.
Most baseball fans just want to watch baseball. The game is a break from real life. We must fight about politics at other times, because that is how free people govern themselves. It is the price of freedom and self-governance. If we did not have political debate, we would be a dictatorship.
But most people — even those who do politics for a living — do not want to do it all day, every day. Sports is not immune from cultural politics: debates about integration in the 1940s were undoubtedly political. But political debates came up only insofar as they affected the game.
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/07/baseballs-commissioner-cares-more-about-politics-than-about-fans/
