So the Montreal Expos, in an effort to overcome incredible odds and actually contend this season, try to make a trade to improve their team. Bud Selig, who just last November tried to off the Expos, is in position to block the trade.
Where is the outrage over this? If this deal gets blocked, this is perhaps one of the single most outrageous acts by management in the history of sport. This screams “conflict of interest” like I’ve never before seen, even from Proud to be yer Bud.
So go ahead, baseball. Give people yet another reason to hate you. As if competitive imbalance, strike threats, high ticket prices, and steroids weren’t enough of a reason. This is sabotage. There is no other word for it.
Oh yeah, and the last time I checked, the Twins were doing pretty well for themselves.
(Wondering if the Expos have a cardboard stand-up of Bud Selig in their locker room a la Major League…)
Bud Selig is an ass, no question about it. One of the local sportscasters here in Connecticut has an interesting take on the recent Expos trades; namely, that Bud wants to see the franchise move to D.C. so he wants some quality players on the team but doesn’t want an outrageous payroll. Who knows? The guy (not to mention the rest of the owners for allowing him to stay in the position of “Commissioner”) is a goat-felching fucktard.
I honestly don’t care whether this deal goers through or not. If it happens, swell. If Selig blocks it, I won’t blame him a bit.
I see this as a cynical ploy by GM Omar Minaya to get some attention for himself and insure himself a job someplace else next season. Unlike every other GM in baseball, Minaya has the luxury (or THOUGHT he had the luxury) of not taking the long view. He can throw money around (or THOUGHT he could throw money around) that he doesn’t have, since the Expos won’t be around next year anyway.
He figures if he can make the Expos a temporary “contender” (fact is, despite the gloating commentaries by the anti-Selig crowd, the Expos are closer to last place than to first), he’ll be perceived as a genius, and some other club will hire him next season. And if he blows a lot of money in the meantime, well, it’s not HIS money!
The Expos are a charity case, nothing more. They’re being temporarily supported by the owners ONLY because there’s some question as to whether the team can simply be euthanized. IF (as I expect), the owners ARE given the green light to dissolve the team, the owners would be NUTS to spend much to keep the Expos in contention. Frankly, if the owners don’t feel like letting Minaya spend THEIR money (not his) on this particular charity, I understand perfectly.
Only because they’re in the division with the team with the best record in baseball and the ‘best’ last place team. They’re only 5 games out of a wild card spot and if they played in the NL Contral, they’d be 2 back of the Cards.
They would cease being a charity case in approximately 25 seconds if MLB would let them move to DC.
It goes without saying that, given the value baseball supposedly places on its history, the idea of killing any of the original 16 teams (including the Twins) should be unthinkable.
And given a choice between killing a team in its 34th season, and letting it move to greener pastures, it seems pretty obvious which is preferable.
Selig’s refusal to consider relocation until after contraction, when relocation might possibly remove the need for contraction, demonstrates just how little effort Bud ‘Bowie’ Selig and MLB are putting into trying to find an alternative to contraction.
Dear Bud: fuck you up both nostrils with a rusty rebar.
Living in Milwaukee, I, more than any of you, can testify to what a fucking cocksucker Selig is. I can remember 7 years ago as if it were yesterday. That piece of ugly shit sneering on t.v., demanding that tax payers build him a new stadium or he was moving the Brewers. He never asked for a stadium, he demand one, with extreme prejudice, or else he’d move the team!
Move them you piece of [slur ommited] shit! They haven’t been anywhere near the playoffs since 1982! That’s before I was fucking born!:mad: Why should we pay for a stadium for your no talent millionaires to play a kids game in?
I don’t care about the Expos. But any thread that get’s people to talk about what a total waste of his fathers sperm Selig is, is alright by me!
**
And I’ve certainly been suspicious about how Montreal has been the most active team in beefing up.
Trying to make the franchise attractive for that move to D.C., is my conspiracy theory.
Why shouldn’t the Expos have to live within the budgetary constraints of a team drawing 15,000 people to its games like any other franchise, whether MLB is operating them or not?
Ah well, my team, the Tigers, is abysmal, and just traded the only player (Jeff Weaver) I cared about. And baseball is going to be shutting down for a good solid season or two, as two of the biggest pricks who ever walked the Earth, Selig and Donald Fehr, do their best to destroy a game fewer and fewer people give a shit about.
I think the Expos should move to DC. I think they’d get a bigger fan base, and maybe make some money for themselves. Especially if they got even one of those players they were talking about to go with Colon.
As for Selig, well, here’s a rustry crowbar to shove up your ass.
This state was split right down the middle when the question of a tax to buy that puke a new stadium came up in the mid 90’s. There was a state wide referendum about a sports lottery to pay for it, but the referendum lost. So the state legislature, palms greased from several different locations, especially construction firms, voted (by 1 stinking vote) to raise a tax for a stadium. The asshole who cast that vote was a Republican who ran for state senate on the promise of not voting for a stadium tax!:eek::mad: His district quickly recalled his ass, and threw him out. The first time in state history that ever happened. Meanwhile, Selig, the ugliest man in Milwaukee, continued to go on television and act as though he were Mr. Nice Guy for not moving the Brew Crew after all. Now, with their nice tax payer built stadium (Emperors New Clothes), the Milwaukee Brewers are one of the worst teams in Major League baseball, and have been since 1982.
Even with a new stadium to show off, attendance stinks.
Selig has to go after someone. Because after what he put this state through, if he were to shut down the Brewers, there would be an assasination attempt!
One is as an investment in the future - after all, there is still a very good chance that there may be one for the Expos. The payoff in attendance/revenues generally comes after the club does well on the field, so if you want butts in the seats next year (in Montreal or DC), the best foundation is being competitive this year.
The second is that while a ML team acts in many ways like a business, its ultimate reason for being is that it’s a very fancy toy. (Which is why few of us salivate when the business pages report that a $150M furniture manufacturing business is on the market, but many of us wish we had that sort of dough so we could buy the hometown baseball team.) And toys beg to be played with. And in a sport, if you’re not going to play to win, why play? It may not technically be his toy, but I’m glad the GM is taking advantage of the opportunity to see what he can do with it.
It probably also galls Milwaukee residents that the new stadium that they paid for has to be the coldest, dankest, most charmless stadium build in the past 10 years.
But anyway, I hope MLB allows the Expos to beef up their payroll by 5 million and acquire Floyd. That would be so awesome. Twins - Expos World Series. Or it might be in some alternate universe where the players don’t strike in mid-August. The rat bastards.
On the one hand, I’d love the trade to go through - because if Montreal continues to do well (better than previous years), then the chances of them being moved and not contracted increase. And if they do move, they’ll move here to DC
With the talent they have, more fans will come to the games. More fans come to the game, the greater the likelihood that another enterprising soul will buy the team from MLB, which isn’t going to own them forever.
On the other hand, owners pay exorbitant amounts of dough to players just to rent them, sometimes. Aren’t many owners who show any fiscal responsibility. Now, perhaps this isn’t their motive in blocking the trade, but the end result is that they’re spending less than, perhaps, they need to.
I’d like to see them contract the team with the longest active string of losing seasons, who also is on pace to draw over 800,000 fewer fans this year than last, who play in a park where the roof leaks.
If MLB didn’t take over the Expos, they wouldn’t even have done the Bartolo Colon deal. The 'Spos should be happy Loria is now killing a promising team in Miami.
So you see many of the rants about Minaya spending money are not legit, he’s not spending any money at all. That’s why this deal hasn’t happened yet. He is mortgaging any future the Expos might have, and that would be worth ranting about.
