PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — AP – [1]Former commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who lorded over baseball during 15 tumultuous years that saw players gain free agency and start the spiral of multimillion-dollar salaries, died Thursday. He was 80.
Yeah, gee, there’s an accomplishment, huh?
“I want it to be remembered that I was commissioner during a time of tremendous growth in the popularity of the game,” he said, “and that it was a time in which no one could question the integrity of the game.”
Yeah, well… for the first year of that 15 years, anyway. Past that, not so much. Under his “stewardship” millions of people lost interest in the game. I was one of them.
His job, in terms of what the owners were dictating, was to keep money flowing into the owners pockets… And from that standpoint I suppose it could be argued he did that, at least in the short term. To keep that money flowing, however, he ended up making too many concessions to the world around us.
More than granted, that a lot of the changes that came to the game during his tenure were reflective of changes that were in society. But his charge wasn’t getting the game to reflect the ugliness that was going on in society, but to relieve us from it one game at a time. He failed. Miserably.
Baseball became popular when it did, because baseball is at the bottom line a diversion. A diversion from the everyday life, some of which in these times can get very ugly indeed. Instead, the greed and the ugliness start showing up in baseball itself… The rising power of the players union, arbitration, multimillion dollar salaries, all of that, at an increasing rate over the years he ran things. As a direct result, we now see the NFL , bad is that monster is of late, with greater popularity than that of baseball. In a time frame when the population of this country has skyrocketed, baseball game attendance has remained flat. Ticket prices, of course, are part of that scenario. Then again, the ticket prices wouldn’t be necessary without the multimillion dollar salaries.
Don’t misunderstand; I’m not grave dancing here, not by any stretch. I’m sorry he’s gone. I’m sure he had some fine qualities. But after what I saw I happen to the game with him at the controls, please don’t expect me to be singing his praises, either.