Bud Selig on the Oakland Coliseum: “it’s a pit”

Bud Selig was on John Feinstein’s radio show. Unlike yesterday, today Feinstein left the opinion-offering to others. Good move! Selig was asked about a lot of things. Two of note. First the A’s stadium situation. Here’s what he said about the Colisuem

“It’s a pit,” Selig said. “It reminds me of old County Stadium and Shea Stadium. We need to deal with that. I’ve had a committee working on it for two or three years, and there’s no question we’re going to have to solve that problem.”

When? Well, there’s a lawsuit and that committee’s agenda is about as barren as the Mojave, but he’ll solve it, by gum. I wish I thought the San Jose lawsuit had a better chance of succeeding and thus the antitrust exemption scuttled, but I’m highly skeptical. When it gets dismissed it’ll be back in Selig’s court and I suppose we’ll be waiting around forever again.

The second topic: a generic softball about Hank Aaron being the true home run king. It’s a topic I hate because it’s just designed for people to offer their judgment about PEDs. Which is fine as far as it goes, but it’s not so fine when their opinion of such matters causes them to pretend that certain things never happened. Note: MLB still recognizes Barry Bonds as the home run champ. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to say that Bonds was better than Aaron in your view if you don’t want to. But you can’t wish away the actual records as matters of fact.

That said, I like Selig’s answer:

“Henry Aaron and I, as you know, have been extremely close friends for 58 years now; it’s hard to believe,” Selig said. “I believe he’s the greatest player of my generation. I saw him – I wish everybody could have seen him in the ’50s when he was young and not trying to pull everything. He was unbelievable to watch. Unbelievable. He’s a man of class, a man of dignity. He’s represented our sport beautifully, and his carer is legendary. I’m not going to say any more on that. You can figure out from my answer, I’m sure.”

Say what you want about Selig -- and there’s a lot to say -- but I like when he talks about this stuff because when he does it he sounds like a baseball fan. And he is a baseball fan. No matter what he’s done or not done, you can tell he loves the game. That, even if he’s the commissioner and views these things differently than I do, I could at least sit and have a baseball debate with him about it rather than have him be some joyless Bowie Kuhn type.