Figureheads Are Turning in Baseball

I’ve never been able to figure out why baseball felt it had to have a commissioner. I’ve never been able to figure out why England has to have a king.

They don’t let either of them do anything except ride around in carriages and look important. At least the baseball commissioner doesn’t have to wear a plumed hat.

Baseball is run by a bunch of tough-minded characters who bought baseball teams for the same reasons other men buy old Greek coins or pretty yachts or polo ponies. It’s a hobby.

They are usually guys who never in their lives have been told what to do by anybody and they don’t propose to start now. They look upon the commissioner of baseball as merely another guy who works for them. They might leave their shoes outside the door at night for him to shine. Or they might let him hold their coats.

They didn’t hire a commissioner, they inherited him. The original commissioner, a crusty old federal judge who didn’t particularly like baseball and certainly despised most of the people in it--including the players--was taken on at the heels of the game’s most heinous scandal, the bungled throwing of the 1919 World Series. The game was intended to bask in the reflected glow of his probity. The game basked instead in the reflected glow of Babe Ruth, who was nobody’s role model. They didn’t really need the judge--but nobody knew that in 1921.

They gave Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis a big club--it was the “best interest of baseball” card--and he used it whenever the mood struck him. A cantankerous, humorless, unsentimental old party whose views were barely this side of William of Orange’s, he took great delight in tweaking the noses of the men who owned baseball. He declared players free agents, he kicked out owners for gambling, he wielded his authority so autocratically, the press dusted off the word czar to describe his despotism. Judge Landis began to think he ruled by divine right.

Landis took the position that his rule was absolute and the commissioners who followed him tried to preserve that tradition with middling success. The owners fired Landis’ successor, Happy Chandler, a former (and future) Kentucky governor and U.S. senator for trying to act like Landis.

They replaced him with Ford Frick, a former newspaperman, and all they let him do was decide if it was raining too hard to play World Series games. On his watch, the Dodgers left Brooklyn, the Giants left New York and the Braves and Athletics and Browns took off from Boston and Philadelphia and St. Louis in several directions at once. Frick was so obliging, they let him retire at full pension. But they have never got anybody quite so pliant since.

They finally hired the president of Yale University--which is about the only way anyone from Yale can get in the big leagues--and all he did was kick out the No. 1 hitter in the annals of the game. Baseball stayed out of it. Pete Rose wasn’t much use to them anymore.

Bart Giamatti died before they could assess the damage but when his successor, Fay Vincent, barred pitcher Steve Howe for his seventh (or was it eighth?) drug-related violation, he had to apologize for apparent witness intimidation of members of the Yankee staff. See, they didn’t want to lose a pitcher of Howe’s caliber. Howe had an earned-run average under three at the time, you see.

Francis T. (Fay) Vincent is a deceptively mild-looking, cow-eyed, moon-faced executive who looked about as safe to the owners as a house pet. A toy commissioner. They were perfectly willing to let him call World Series games on account of earthquakes and otherwise make the tough decisions. The rest of the time, presumably, he could ride around and do all the ceremonial things kings--and baseball “czars”--are supposed to do. Nothing.

Then, he decided to realign the National League. With the advent of the Florida Marlins in the National League, he decided to put the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds in the Eastern Division, where they belonged, and move the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals to the West, where they clearly belonged.

Now, commissioners can kick all-time hitters out of the game--providing their usefulness is over--they can make players free agents, fine and punish. But when they interfere with the great god Television, they’ve gone too far. They have got a fight on their hands.

The Chicago Cubs are owned by the publishing-TV giant, the Chicago Tribune Company, which, among other things, has one of the so-called superstations, WGN, in its portfolio.

It didn’t want realignment. Too many Cub games on the West Coast. Bad TV times. Damn the geography, full speed backward.

Baseball historically hates to get into the courts. As a business operating well outside the pale of antitrust laws, indeed the Constitution itself, they shudder at the thought of the game being reinspected by the Supreme Court, which ruled way back in 1921 that the game was a sport, not a business. Baseball doesn’t want that ruling reviewed.

Nevertheless, the Tribune Company took the commissioner, thus, the game, to court. The Tribune Company is more than WGN. It also owns KTLA, the station that televises Angel games; WPIX, the station that televises New York Yankee games; WPHL, the station that does the Philadelphia Phillies’ games, and KWGN, the station that will do the Colorado Rockies’ games.

And the company recently concluded a $75-million deal with the Dodgers to televise their games on KTLA for the next five years.

WGN is in the sack with some very powerful bedfellows.

When the disaffected owners called for a meeting this week to “discuss” the commissioner--English translation: fire him--the lineup, not surprisingly, included most of the clients of the television conglomerate run by the Tribune.

Some were surprised to see Dodger owner Peter O’Malley in that company. Historically, the O’Malley family has been pro-commissioner in these disputes. Walter O’Malley always stoutly defended incumbents--for the very good reason that he had picked them in the first place.

But Peter insists that his opposition is not based on any alliance with the broadcast arm of the Tribune company.

“That would not be true,” he says. “My disenchantment with this commissioner far preceded our dealings with Channel 5. My opposition is based on his performance before that, in his (labor) handlings with the Player Relations Committee and with the fact he no longer has a consensus with the owners or the league presidents and cannot operate effectively without one. You can’t serve as commissioner unless you have the support of a majority of the owners.”

Adds O’Malley: “It’s true we have always supported the incumbent. But this is a case where his performance is a disappointment to us.”

Like a king, a commissioner can’t be fired. He has to be dethroned. It takes a palace coup. Baseball has a dandy one going. A congress of Brutuses will meet Tuesday to bury Caesar.

You get the feeling this czar, like the real-life one, is also sitting on a barn roof waiting for his executioners to come.

But baseball will do well to remember the maxim: “When you shoot at a king, be sure you kill him.”

They might kill more than a commissioner, they might kill the concept. Does the game really want to become a democracy?

If you can kick a commissioner out for acting like a commissioner, what do you need one for?

Why not get a guy off the streets--or see if Mel Brooks is busy--dress him up in a white suit or a fur hat or a gold coat with epaulets and let him go around cutting highway ribbons or telling Yogi Berra jokes at Rotary lunches. I wouldn’t even let him come to the games.

I mean, who needs him? Baseball already has a czar--WGN.