June 5, 2010 – He was once a small market owner who friendlied his way to the job as commissioner. He went from being one of them to working for them. No neat trick. The job required speaking softly and not carrying a big stick. Bud Selig has been at it now for 18 years.

Like all commissioners, he pretty much does what he wants with the things that fall into his purview. Steroids? Ignore them. People love home runs and profits are up. Extend the season into winter? Sure, if it increases Neilson ratings. Institute the wild card? There’s nothing against baseball traditions in that. Change the All Star game rules. Heck, it’s just an exhibition. Change Fay Vincent’s lifetime ban on George Steinbrenner. Sure, if it gets me elected and eventually gets me a $14.5 million annual salary.

Selig remains a dolt ignoring what’s wrong and not exercising his powers to make the game better. Barry Bonds is good to him. Asterisks will only harm his legacy as commissioner, which thankfully, only has two years to go. But even then, the owners will put another “company man” in place for more of the same. Major League Baseball in it’s wisdom to cite it’s passion to protect the integrity of the game, has no integrity, and Bud Selig will always be the easiest reason to explain why. Like the Sphinx, Selig is best at doing nothing.

So he won’t change the course of actual events which prevented Armando Galarraga from recording a lifetime achievement. He won’t make what’s wrong right. He will base this on the grounds that it’s not in his power to change the course of events in a baseball game. He is good with Jim Joyce going through life as “the umpire that blew the perfect game.”

Selig believes that baseball needs its goats, it’s Mickey Owens’ and Ralph Brancas. Selig’s predecessor, Fay Vincent, took 50 no-hitters off the books in 1991, and also changed the rules about no-hitters to enable Andy Hawkins to throw one and lose a game. If you were a baseball historian, you could make countless cases about how the commissioner butted in and changed the course of history.

But Bud remains the Sphinx, the stoned faced symbols that don’t move, like the ones the Egyptians placed at the entrance of their temples to guard the mysteries of the gods from the uninitiated. The sphinx is a portal taken from a Hebrew word which means “to hide.” Which is exactly what Selig does best.