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Chris CountsFire Bud! Yes, the first order of business in baseball is getting a new commissioner. I mean, it's not like Bud Selig is the dictator of some Banana Republic. How about some term limits, for crying-out-loud? It's not like he's generously providing a public service. He made over eight figures last year! And what does baseball get for that obscene sum of money? A guy who declines comment on everything, cooks up highly questionable deals (see his recent cable wranglings and past attempts to contract the Twins), and avoided the steroid scandal until it reached a crisis ...
My second order of business would be to put Minnie Minoso in the Hall of Fame. For all the furor that was created over Buck O'Neil's lack of recognition by Cooperstown, I believe Minnie has an even more compelling case. After all the debates over Ron Santo, Bert Blylevin, Andre Dawson and Goose Gossage, I've rarely heard about a whisper about Minnie. Yet in the last election, he received about a third the number of votes received by ... Buzzie Bavasi. What a joke ...
My final act as commissioner would be to require teams that aren't within a reasonable distance of a sell-out to give tickets away to kids. Let's fill up those empty seats. For baseball to prosper in the future, the game needs to capture the imagination of kids the way it once did. Not only are the kids of today distracted by about a thousand things that didn't exist in 1947, but the cost of getting into a game is just prohibitive ...