Selig encourages Alderson to talk with Mets, 'important for Mets and Yankees to be healthy'

10/8, NY Times, "According to several people in baseball briefed on the matter, Selig has encouraged Alderson to pursue the Mets’ job. Those people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Selig valued Alderson’s work in the Dominican, but he was concerned about the Mets, who had a significant drop in attendance this season as fans reacted sourly to the team’s continued failures.

• In Alderson, they said, Selig sees an authoritative figure who can make the Mets, a prominent franchise, both competitive and prosperous.

“It’s important for baseball for the Mets and Yankees to be healthy,” said one of the people who spoke of Selig’s motivations.

• Selig may also be acting out of personal friendship; he and Fred Wilpon are longtime allies.

On Friday, one ringing endorsement of Alderson came from Walt Jocketty, the general manager of the Cincinnati Reds and a longtime assistant to Alderson on the A’s.

• “...Sandy is a perfect fit,” he said in Philadelphia, where his team was playing the Phillies in a National League division series."...

NY Times article by Michael S. Schmidt runs under two headlines, allowing the Times and/or 'several people in baseball' to frame the story: "Sandy Alderson, on Mets list, is used to power," and "A Mets candidate used to authority"

• The NY Times has another pathetic story, "Umpires and Players will meet," by Michael S. Schmidt

"Players and umpires have scheduled a meeting for Dec. 3 to discuss complaints about umpiring, baseball officials said.

• The meeting will be monitored by officials from Major League Baseball and the players and umpires unions, the officials said.

The players association asked for the meeting after many players complained about umpiring."...

• I don't see any suggestion in the Times article that this is an outrage and scandal entirely due to Bud Selig's incompetence. I understand the NY Times and Red Sox share ownership, and that the Red Sox and Selig are quite close.

Bud Selig makes something over $20 million a year to sit atop a legal monopoly that operates in secret as per its recently changed business status to 'for profit LLC'. He does whatever he wants. The most important job he has is managing the umpires and he refuses to do it. He has a serious problem, but he has structured MLB such that anyone who questions him will be out. He can drop names here and there of guys in MLB who were supposed to clean up the umpiring and didn't, but it's all smoke. Compared to Selig himself, words coming from anyone else would be considered that of company secretaries by the autonomous umpires. All Selig needs to do is make a few phone calls. Instead, he shows complete disregard for the blood and guts put on the field by players, time, money and emotion invested by fans. Selig avoids using technical methods to make the game honest, and refuses to address the scandalous umpiring. He tells you he really, really agonizes over this or that to make you think he cares. His actions show the reality.

• Reference: "Selig's pay climbs past $18million," Sports Business Journal by Eric Fisher, 2/2/09

"The (tax) return will likely be the final one available to the public anyway, as the Office of the Commissioner has since gone through a change in filing status to become a for-profit limited liability corporation. MLB executives have said the move is tax-neutral for the league, but they have not articulated how that was achieved or, if that is indeed the case, why it was not pursued previously. DuPuy said in August that the switch, while motivated in part by a

• desire to avoid further public disclosures, would “better reflect the nature and structure of our business.”

The change relieves MLB of IRS disclosure rules that went into effect last year for 2008 and beyond mandating the listing of up to 20 employees of nonprofit entities who earn more than $150,000 and carry significant functional responsibilities.

• Gross receipts for the commissioner’s office, generated almost entirely by dues levied on the individual MLB clubs, rose 14 percent during the fiscal year to $141.3 million."...

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