Who is the greatest baseball commissioner?

[SouthCampusHero]

I saw the thread about Clemens and thought I would ask. Since I live in Chicago, I am around plenty of Milwaukee transplants that will argue until they are blue in the face that Bud Selig is the best ever.

Their argument is the following:

1) More revenue sharing that allows small-market teams to compete.
2) A "salary cap."
3) Intra-league play
4) Attendance figures
5) Expansion
6) TV ratings

I'm not really a baseball know-it-all and dont pretend to be one. BUt my arguments to those points are the following ( as a VERY casual fan):
1) There is still a wide divide between small market teams and big market teams.
2) The salary cap is bologna since it is so high that small market teams dont benefit from it.
3) Intra-league play was cool...but is it still entertaining to the fan? It might be. I saw a TON of Red Sox fans in Chicago.
4) Attendance is up...but it wasnt during the strike...which happened under Selig. Shouldnt that be a black eye? Shouldnt another black eye be the Steroids Era that happened under his watch? The evidence was there...but the ratings seemed to trump that evidence...and MLB didnt do anything about it.
5) I dont know enough about #5.
6) It seems to me that every sport beats older ratings. Is # of TV's within a household taken into consideration? Once upon a time, families huddled up to one TV (if they were lucky enough to have one) to listen to Walter Cronkite. It seems to me that nightly news is dead (relatively speaking). Cable networks make tons of games available on tv (or the internet). It seems like an apples to oranges comparison to me.

Hey, maybe Selig IS the best. As I mentioned, Im not a huge baseball fan. The steroid era and the strike stick out to me, though.

And lets not discuss his handling of the Brewers when he owned them. Lowest payroll...highest profit margin...terrible record...yada yada yada. If only two generations of the Miller family (Miller Brewing Company) didnt go down in a plane crash, the Milwaukee Braves would still be the team in Milwaukee. Sadly, they lost their family...the owners...and were sold to a group from Chicago that moved them to Atlanta...and the rest is history.

Useless information alert:

Bud Selig's RANDOMLY CHOSEN freshman roommate at the University of Wisconsin was Herb Kohl (founder of Kohl's Foods, Kohl's Department Store, US Senator and Milwaukee Bucks owner). In other words, both "freshmen" ended up owning professional sports teams. Selig (with the help of others) bought the Seattle Pilots after making money as a used car salesman.

 

[Knicks411]

6) It seems to me that every sport beats older ratings. Is # of TV's within a household taken into consideration? Once upon a time, families huddled up to one TV (if they were lucky enough to have one) to listen to Walter Cronkite. It seems to me that nightly news is dead (relatively speaking). Cable networks make tons of games available on tv (or the internet). It seems like an apples to oranges comparison to me.

It's actually the other way around. Tv ratings were generally higher in the past because there were like 3 TV stations.

I think you can't call selig the best commish for no other reason than there was no world series in 94.

 

[SWC75]

Happy Chandler, who ordered the other National league owners not to boycott the Dodgers when they first played Jackie Robinson.

Selig ignored the steriod issue for eyars and is playing favorites among the owners, kicking out Frank McCourt but doing everything to keep the Mets for Fred Wilpon.