XM MLB Chat: NY Times all choked up, happy that Bud Selig 'finally finds peace'

Perhaps the NY Times thinks Bud Selig has been brave pulling down

$20 million a year atop a legal monopoly.

Headlines on Times sport page website tonight 4/21 leading into Friday, 4/22/11 include:

"Selig finally finds peace as he looks to his next job," NY Times, Tyler Kepner

Under the headline is a picture of Selig lecturing in a classroom with the caption,

"Baseball's commissioner, Bud Selig, at Marquette University Law School, where he has lectured on numerous topics since 2009."

One of 2 headlines on NY Times Bats blog:

"Selig stands tall"

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2/25/09, "Bud Selig paid more than $18 million in 2007," ESPN

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

(Selig changed MLB's tax status so his salary is now officially secret, but increases were said to be planned

beyond the $18+ million):

"MLB Commissioner Bud Selig earned $18.35 million for the league’s fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2007, an amount up 22 percent from the prior year and one that again places him among the highest-paid individuals in all of sports.

Selig’s pay is outlined in MLB’s most recently filed tax documents for the Office of the Commissioner. The amount covers the last full year of work for the longtime commissioner before he agreed to a three-year contract extension in January 2008 that will keep him in the post through 2012. That deal, at the time of its signing, was believed to call for further salary increases....

Selig’s earning power has surpassed that of other league commissioners for at least several years, and his 2007 compensation is more than most MLB players, too.... Entering 2009, only seven MLB players will earn more this year than Selig’s $18.35 million of two years ago....

The 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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3/8/2009, "Overpaid Selig Should be Held Accountable" Wallace Matthews Newsday,

"Congress had its chance in 2005 and let him off the hook. I had my chance two weeks ago and got nothing but an earful of excuses.

In the interim, I have gotten one talking-to after another by Friends of Bud who want me to

back off the poor, beleaguered commissioner.

Well, I think the commissioner has gotten far too easy a ride.

If he thinks being questioned by a reporter whose only form of punishment

is delivered in 12 inches of column space in a newspaper is tough,

he should try being a player someday.

He should be held to the same standards he, and we, demand of them. Everyone, it seems, assumes A-Rod is lying when he says he doesn't know precisely what he was injecting into his body.

Yet the same people assume Selig is telling the truth when he says he had no idea his game was infected with steroids in the mid-'90s.

This despite all evidence to the contrary. Despite Rick Helling standing up at a union meeting in

1998 and saying what no one in baseball wanted to hear:

that the game was being overrun by steroids....

If Selig truly didn't know, shame on him. If he knew and chose not to act, double shame on him.

If he knew but couldn't act because he was powerless in the face of his players association, then it's strike three. You're out, Bud.

The double standard is obvious and infuriating. Teams pay their players a ton of money and expect performance, honesty and accountability in return. In most cases, I believe they get it.