“Major League Baseball is a national institution and we take our responsibilities seriously when it comes to how the game affects the lives of American youth.” Bud Selig -2006.

September 10th, 1992. A day which will live in infamy in the annals of American sports history.

That’s the date, for all practical intents and purposes, that Bud Selig became the commissioner of Major League Baseball.

The Major League Baseball Executive Council of Owners basically forced then-Commissioner Fay Vincent to resign. Acting under authority derived from the Major League Agreement, which granted the Executive Council the authority to rule Baseball in the absence of a Commissioner, Selig was named Chairman of the Major League Executive Council, a title he would hold and wield almost the same power as a Commissioner would have until his formal naming as the Commissioner of Baseball in June of 1998, a position he has held ever since that time.

Selig’s supporters point to such achievements as inter-league play, the three division formats of the National and American Leagues, the adding of an extra round of playoffs with the wild-card system, the building of 16 new ballparks and increased revenue-sharing by all major league teams under his tenure as signs of successful leadership of the game by Selig.

Those things might all be well and good. But let’s look at some of the other things that have occurred on Selig’s watch.

The biggest scandal in professional sports history, the Steroid Era, happened primarily because Selig ignored what other sports were dealing with on the issue and never really addressed a serious drug testing policy until after the horse was already out of the barn and irrevocable harm had been done to many of Major  Leagues Baseball’s most cherished records.

Selig presided over three work stoppages by major league players including one that for the first time in the history of the game something happened that not even two world wars and a depression had been able to do: cancel the World Series!

Selig has also presided over baseball’s fall from grace as America’s top spectator sport as the NFL,, the NBA and even NASCAR have laid claim now to being America’s pastime, a title that baseball, until the early 1990’s claimed undisputably.

Hmm, the early 1990’s...what was that major event that “started all this”? Oh yeah...that Selig guy from Milwaukee became baseball’s top power broker.

Funny if you connect the dots, history follows a path to a starting point. September 10th, 1992 seems to have started all this. True fans of baseball are left to wonder on what date it will all end!

That’s how I see it from the other side of the desk! See ya down the road!