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AN OPEN LETTER TO BUD SELIG 20
metroactive.com | sanjose.com | metrosiliconvalley.com | APRIL 17-23, 2013
that the A’s play 10 miles away from AT&T Park and want to move nearly an hour south—and somehow this would threaten a Giants club coming off two World Series championships in the last three years? A’s owner Lew Wolff, your old college fraternity buddy from Wisconsin, has played it cool—almost too cool, as it could be argued that your relationship with him has hurt the process. Any other owner would have called you out on the carpet. Instead, you and Wolff pet each other on the heads like kittens. Of course, there are those rare occasions when we see you’re not completely apathetic, such as when a reporter asked where the process stood last year and you replied, “You aren’t going to get a fucking answer.”
Fuck. That. WHEN WILL THE A’S BE MOVING TO SAN JOSE? “You can rest assured that whatever decision is ultimately made will take into consideration all of the information that we have received and will be in the best interest of Baseball.” That’s how you ended your letter to Reed. But this isn’t about what’s good for baseball. It never has been. This process has been protracted so you can lead every party along, put MLB on a pedestal and line your pockets at every turn. If this was really about what’s best for baseball, the A’s would already be in San Jose.
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Baseball Is Un-American
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Special prices through 4.30.13
T’S NOTHING short of bizarre that the national pastime, which ostensibly embodies our all-American values of competition and fair play, remains the only business exempt from U.S. monopoly laws. That a single recreational activity deserves such special treatment—absent any economic reason except greed or convenience—should offend our sense of decency. A Soviet-style central control model opts Major League Baseball out of market forces and accountability. This shameful state of affairs basically allows MLB to break free-market rules, corrupt the game with performance enhancers and cheat the public with artificially steroided ticket prices. Memo to team owners: The free market won, and you guys are dinosaurs. The United States’ phenomenal prosperity in the 20th century can be attributed in part to antitrust legislation that promoted competition. The laws prevented any single company from dominating their industry. Competitive markets work better than controlled ones because they force organizations to be more efficient and respond to their customers rather than keep prices artificially high. Who gave a Kremlin in Milwaukee the power to decide whether a team owner could build a baseball stadium in San Jose with his own money? The United States Supreme Court. In 1922, a number of now-dead justices like William H. Taft, Oliver W. Holmes Jr. and Louis Brandeis decided that baseball wasn’t interstate commerce. A smart bunch, sure, but not exactly on the cutting edge. Their thinking had been rendered technologically obsolete the previous year, when the 1921 World Series was broadcast to a market that crossed state lines. Subsequent court rulings have acknowledged that baseball is in fact an interstate activity that should abide by the same laws that prevent other sport leagues and businesses from engaging in anticompetitive behavior. Yet somehow this anachronism stands. And it’s not good for the sport, for the fans or for our national claim as the global champion of freedom. It’s time to stop the charade and bring baseball into the 21st Century. Hopefully, some attorneys and red-blooded believers in liberty will step forward and challenge this ridiculous 90-year-old ruling—whether or not San Jose gets a team. —Dan Pulcrano