Best of BP: A Different Commissioner Wouldn’t Mean a Better One

Image credit: © MARK HOFFMAN/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL / USA TODAY NETWORK

This article was originally published on June 23, 2023.

After legislation approving the Las Vegas stadium the A’s will eventually play in was passed, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred took to a podium to mark the occasion. Ginny Searle has already covered quite a bit of what was said there, and more importantly, what it all meant, so that’s not our concern here at the moment. What’s important to know is that Manfred was condescending, he was aggressive, he was very much the face of a company telling you why they make the decisions they make, and if you don’t like it, well, what can you do? In short, he was Rob Manfred.

Predictably, the same kind of calls rang out on social media that always do when Manfred feels like he needs to take things personally and lash out, which is basically whenever he feels his authority has been challenged (which is often): “this guy should be replaced as commissioner,” “isn’t there anyone better for the job,” etc. I am here to tell you that no, there is not someone better, and there is little point in replacing him. If you believe there is room for a better commissioner in MLB, then you might not understand what, exactly, the commissioner’s role is. So let’s get into that.

Rob Manfred works for the owners. He’s not secretly in the pocket of the owners, this isn’t some cloak and dagger affair: his job is as their representative. He has some measure of power over them, thanks to his ability to justify decisions believed to be in “the best interests of Baseball,” but that power mostly exists to keep them from—to be real direct about it—fucking things up for the rest of the owners. Like in 2019, when the Astros were caught stealing signs with technology and relaying those signs through the banging of trash cans, Manfred stepped in to punish them, and also warned the rest of the clubs about making a single public peep about the matter. The punishment was light, with Houston paying a $5 million fine that was the max Manfred could demand of them, but it (and a few lost draft picks) mostly served as a reminder to the Astros’ organization that they were causing problems for the other teams by being so blatant about things with their sign stealing. Cut it out, you guys, is what a $5 million fine to a billionaire who gets to keep his World Series trophy and the other $61 million in reported profits that year, while passing the blame solely on to his subordinates, says. It wasn’t a real punishment, so much as a warning flare shot out of the commissioner’s office, a signal to the other teams that said, hey, if you give people reasons to not give us money, if you undermine belief in the results of our games—especially as we’re flinging the doors open wide for gambling—that’s a problem.

Using “the best interests of Baseball” above rather than “baseball” like the actual clause says was intentional: Manfred has the power to make sure the business of MLB continues to run as it should, to ensure that the owners stand as united as their 30 egos allow when it comes time to go toe-to-toe with the players at the bargaining table. That’s not real power, though, so much as the owners hiring a guy they trust to make sure they don’t cross the lines they shouldn’t cross. Which is actually the origin of the commissioner’s office: Kenesaw Mountain Landis was brought in as the first commissioner because MLB needed to be cleaned up and have its image fixed following the 1919 Black Sox scandal. The mistake the owners of the day made was in their desperation for a fix: they essentially crowned Landis god-king of Baseball, as he refused to take the position unless he was truly the most powerful individual in the game, and he would hold the office until he died in it over two decades later. Given his sheer force of will, it’s amazing even that stopped him from issuing further orders.

Once Landis was gone, the owners instituted two rules to ensure there’d never be another one: no change approved by the owners’ vote could be overturned by the “best interest” clause, and two, the owners could sue the commissioner. Armed with these new weapons, the league chose its second commissioner, and he could not have been more different than Landis. Just look at his name: Happy Chandler. He lacked the judge’s iron fist, which was a plus for the owners, but he also didn’t necessarily listen to what they wanted, which more than canceled that out, especially since none of it was the kind of thing they could sue over. Chandler was a favorite among fans and players, so you can probably guess how many terms he would serve as commissioner.

Chandler allowed MLB to integrate under his watch, and did so expressly against the wishes of the vast majority of the league: 15 of the 16 teams of the day voted against integration in a January 1947 meeting, and the one in favor was, of course, the Brooklyn Dodgers. The other teams feared integrating would cost them business at the gate (“hey, what if the rest of America is as racist as we are?!); Chandler felt that not integrating was something he’d have to answer to God for when he died. The man chose faith and what he felt was right over fear of lost profits, so when he asked for his contract to be extended in 1949, three years before it was up, the owners made a new rule saying a commissioner’s contract couldn’t be extended until 18 months from its end at the earliest. Tell him how you really feel, guys.

Landis was too strong-willed and wielded too much power. Chandler wasn’t as aggressive about it, but he still had enough spirit to go against the owners. Over time, the owners learned what it was they wanted out of a commissioner. Ford Frick, the National League president, was an internal promotion rather than an external hire, and his job was to be the face of the owners’ decisions. Unlike Chandler, he spent quite a bit of time in the role, from late-1951 to 1965, and it’s because he did not rock the boat, nor steer it. He still made some suggestions—like pushing for the formation of the Continental League, which would not compete with MLB so much as fill in some holes, and for the growing television revenue to be shared league-wide—but the owners simply took those kinds of things under advisement and reminded him he was needed in front of Congress again to argue about the necessity of the reserve clause. Frick was the model to build off of, and while the owners failed to do so at first—genuinely, no one knows how William Eckert ended up selected as commissioner to succeed him—more Fricks is what they were hoping for from that point forward.

When Fay Vincent went off-script and helped end the 1990 lockout because he knew the owners were in the wrong for instituting it in the first place, he was later given the choice to be fired or resign from the position. Which gave then-Brewers owner Bud Selig the chance to become commissioner. Now, Selig was not simply a public face but, instead, was the commissioner with the most power this side of Landis. The thing is, he was also an owner, ruling from his throne with an owner’s mentality: he worked for the owners, but he also had their trust, because he was one of them, and clearly on their side rather than in it for himself. (In fact, as detailed in John Helyar’s The Lords of the Realm, Selig was one of the ringleaders pushing collusion in the mid-80s; there was never any question of who would become the next commissioner after Vincent, for anyone besides George W. Bush, anyway.) Selig had the vision for increasing profits, for slowing the ascent of the Players Association, for creating solidarity among the owners and then turning it on those same players. He was a true believer in the owners’ causes, and because he had the other owners’ trust, even when they weren’t completely on board with what he wanted—such as with George Steinbrenner and revenue-sharing—he would so often get his way, anyway.

Even Selig’s last unofficial act as commissioner was convincing the rest of the owners that Manfred, who worked alongside him for decades in various roles, should take over for him. Manfred wasn’t an owner like his opponent in that election, Tom Werner, and he wasn’t an equal or a leader among equals like Selig, but he knew the assignment left behind by his predecessor, and as the kind of person who would choose a career representing management in labor matters, had no qualms about completing it. The dream that started with Ford Frick and was refined over time as the owners learned what they didn’t want the commissioner to be had been achieved, and it was Rob Manfred.

Manfred might rub both players and fans the wrong way, as he’s openly antagonistic, petty, mean, and a rather unconvincing liar, but (most of) that has little to do with his role. The commissioner’s job is the same whether they’re publicly aggressive, timid as a mouse, or are easily mocked because they’re caught on camera picking their nose like Selig. The rest is noise that is meant to obscure the truth of things, which is that things won’t be “better” with another commissioner. The role requires a certain level of awfulness at its base, and no one who would do anything in the best interests of baseball will ever hold the role—now, in the best interests of Baseball, at least there’s some truth in that.

Manfred might be antagonistic, but he’s a buffer between the owners and everyone else. If you hate Manfred, then your hate is focused where it’s supposed to be; the antagonistic nature of the man is paying dividends for the owners, who get to hide behind him. And that will be the case with his successor, and the one after that, and so on, because this is the job, no matter how much we might wish it otherwise.

Marc Normandin currently writes on baseball’s labor issues and more at marcnormandin.com, which you can read for free but support through his Patreon. His baseball writing has appeared at SB Nation, Defector, Global Sport Matters, Deadspin, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, Sports on Earth, The Guardian, The Nation, FAIR, and TalkPoverty, and you can read his takes on retro video games at Retro XP.

Thank you for reading

This is a free article. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Baseball Prospectus. Subscriptions support ongoing public baseball research and analysis in an increasingly proprietary environment.

Subscribe now