Why?

Because it's better for the sport all around to have an absentee owner, than an owner who is raiding the coffers of the team in a desperate attempt to stay solvent.

Again, in certain situations, the Expos was not one of those situations.

Because it's better for the sport all around to have an absentee owner, than an owner who is raiding the coffers of the team in a desperate attempt to stay solvent.

Now raiding the coffers of other owners? Oh, go right ahead!

The most repreentative single marker of Selig's reign is the perpetually half-filled moat at New Yankee Stadium.

I happened to have the good fortune to take a tour of the Colisseum in Rome recently, and took note (among other things) of the distinct caste system in the seating -- the separate sections for Senators, the Emperor's 50-yard-line luxury box, cut-rate bleachers for the plebes in the upper reaches. By the 1970s and 1980s in the United States, we had risen above such silliness in our major public amphitheatres. Their return in the 21st century is a distinct and unassailable mark of cultural recession. (As is the return after over a century's absence of bare-knuckle fighting.)

I clicked over here specifically to see YR's shtick. Not disappointed! It's like that stuffed animal from childhood you can't throw away even though it's festering with ants and worms.

(As is the return after over a century's absence of bare-knuckle fighting.)

Where would one find that? Irish pikeys? Kimbo Slice on YouTube?

I happened to have the good fortune to take a tour of the Colisseum in Rome recently, and took note (among other things) of the distinct caste system in the seating -- the separate sections for Senators, the Emperor's 50-yard-line luxury box, cut-rate bleachers for the plebes in the upper reaches.

If you're interested in a (perhaps overtheorized) discussion of the seating in Roman arenas, you can check out: Gunderson, Eric. "The Ideology of the Arena." Classical Antiquity 15 (1996), 113-151.

The most repreentative single marker of Selig's reign is the perpetually half-filled moat at New Yankee Stadium.

I hate his handiwork as much as the next person, but there's no way I'd hold him responsible for the moat.

The moat is connected to broader changes in American society, changes which are arguably unprecedented in their extent (although not in their principle). One can hardly hold a commissioner of a sporting trust responsible for these developments.

If you're interested in a (perhaps overtheorized) discussion of the seating in Roman arenas, you can check out: Gunderson, Eric. "The Ideology of the Arena." Classical Antiquity 15 (1996), 113-151.

That's awesome, thanks. This passage neatly sums up the social anxiety that 21st c. pro sports all exploit with their "clubs" and moats and club seats and expensive seats that a lot of patrons can't really afford, but buy anyway:

"I would then propose that there is no radical "outside" to the arena and that when a Roman takes up a position on the sand, in the seats, or or outside the building a la Juvenal or Tacitus' Messala, the apparatus of the arena serves to structure the truths of these positions. Indeed, the spectacle of the arena has a specular effect which makes a spectacle of its own observers, revealing them and determining them through their relationship to the image of themselves produced by their relationship to the arena."

anyone notice how bats breaking has become less common? mlb noticed in 2008 it was getting crazy and have worked the problem

trying to make things safer and no big production

that stuff matters

Because it's better for the sport all around to have an absentee owner, than an owner who is raiding the coffers of the team in a desperate attempt to stay solvent.

Yes, and in this respect I actually think Selig's well-executed move to strip the McCourts of the L.A. Dodgers may go down as his finest moment. It's hard to underrate the importance of that one.

anyone notice how bats breaking has become less common? mlb noticed in 2008 it was getting crazy and have worked the problem

trying to make things safer and no big production

This corresponds almost exactly with the drop in offense, too. The breakable whip-handled bats of the 90s and aughts have been hypothesized as a significant cause of sillyball. I tend to think that minor changes in equipment (bats and balls), were the main cause of both the offensive explosion and its recent fading.

And Goodell is far more proactive at addressing problems and improving his sport than Selig.

It also helps when you don't have to deal with a player's union that has any real effectivenes. The NFL doesn't have to bargain with with the NFLPA, it essentially tells the players the way it's going to be and throws them a bone or two for PR purposes.

Yes, and in this respect I actually think Selig's well-executed move to strip the McCourts of the L.A. Dodgers may go down as his finest moment. It's hard to underrate the importance of that one.

And what about him letting McCourt, Wilpons, Loria, and Crane into the club?

Selig didn't let the Wilpons in.

Okay, as owner Selig approved letting the Doubleday group by the Mets, and then again as owner he approved Doubleday and Wilpon buy the team from themselves, and then as Commissioner he allowed the Wilpons to buy the whole thing. Better?

...and then there's Tampa.

Indeed. Attendance at major-league games in Tampa is terrible...practically nothing!

Years from now, baseball historians will look back at the 1990s and wonder in retrospect why MLB put franchises in Florida when Washington was an available market. They will forget the double whammy of Marion Barry at one end of the B-W Parkway, and later Peter Angelos at the other.

It's better for the league as a whole and the fans to have the league own it in stasis, than it is for a broke owner to own it and drive it to the ground.

Well, the Expos-Nationals were basically driven into the ground by a very tight budget, so it didn't really make any difference. I bet if they'd offered the DC market to Loria in 2001, he would have taken it, and baseball would actually have been better for it.

Baseball might have been better, but not D.C. On behalf of the fans of Washington, we're glad we waited another four years, even if it meant suffering through Elijah Dukes and Jim Bowden. Jeffrey Loria is essentially Bob Short with money.