Rozner: Selig in the Hall of Fame is just wrong

Each December when the Hall of Fame player ballot arrives in the mailbox, included is a list of rules.

States Rule No. 5, "Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team."

Apparently, these qualities don't apply to former baseball commissioners being voted on by members of the "Today's Game Era" committee, which elected Bud Selig to the Hall of Fame on Sunday.

It really makes you wonder if Rule No. 5 holds water anymore, and it feels absolutely fitting for Selig to take the stage in Cooperstown alongside Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

Selig, after all, was the Steroids Commissioner, profiting more from steroid use than any other person in baseball, aside from a few players.

During the Great Home Run 'Roids Race of 1998, Selig was collecting $2.5 million. By 2005, his salary had skyrocketed to $15 million. In the end, it was $22 million and he was paid in the neighborhood of $200 million total since the day Selig, Stan Cook and Peter O'Malley engineered a coup, took down a genuine commissioner in Fay Vincent and installed Selig as the owners' man.

In the final years of his reign, Selig went to great lengths to create an image as the Steroids Sheriff, getting in bed with some nasty folks and getting his hands filthy while trying to nail Alex Rodriguez.

His Hall of Fame campaign was in full swing.

Presiding over the worst scandal in baseball history - one that forever skewed the numbers that are so sacred to generations - will always be Selig's legacy.

But there is so much more.

Space prohibits the listing of the dozens of outrageous events with which Selig was associated - collusion, contraction, canceling the 1994 World Series, the All-Star Game, economic overhaul of the game to benefit a team he owned, and hysterical memory loss before Congress come immediately to mind - but perhaps best summing up his management style was the handling of the Montreal franchise that he helped eliminate in the process.

In 1999, Jeff Loria bought a 24 percent stake in the Expos for $12 million. After issuing a series of cash calls, local owners declined to invest more and gave up their stake in a failing franchise.

Now with a 94 percent stake, Loria was free to move or sell the team. By 2002, the club had been reduced to ashes, but MLB bought the team from Loria for $120 million and handed him a $38 million, interest-free loan, which he used to buy the Marlins from John Henry for $158 million, while Henry moved on to buy the Red Sox.

His former partners sued Loria and MLB under racketeering statutes, claiming Selig conspired to dilute the partners' investment, but lost in arbitration.

MLB sold the decrepit Expos to Ted Lerner in 2006 for $420 million, getting guarantees that Washington would build the Nats a $600 million ballpark.

Meanwhile, Loria got his own $600-million stadium funded 80 percent publicly.

So Loria got all he wanted, Henry got what he wanted, and MLB got the Expos out of Montreal - and made a $300 million profit on the sale while Expos fans lost their franchise, which wound up precisely where Selig wanted it: in Washington.

That is the essence of Bud Selig.

He was also in the middle of a war between Mets co-owners in 2002 when Nelson Doubleday claimed MLB worked to keep the franchise value artificially low as Fred Wilpon was buying out Doubleday. At one point, Selig and Wilpon were said to be very close friends.

And there were other ownership changes orchestrated entirely to keep the matter out of a divorce or other court proceedings, so baseball would not have to open its books.

That was the business of baseball under Selig, who kept the owners under control with promises, threats and loans, always with a hint of The Sopranos.

Despite Selig, when the owners finally stopped trying to beat the players in labor negotiations, the game thrived and has grown in popularity and revenue beyond imagination.

But a Hall of Fame election doesn't revise history. Selig's legacy is secure and no plaque can change that.

brozner@dailyherald.com

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