Tim Sullivan of the SD Union-Tribune writes about his interview with Bud Selig. Bud seems down-right giddy:

Bud Selig believes he has stopped the bleeding. The cure, he claims, is coming.

The commissioner of baseball, a worried man whose worried song has more verses than "Ninety-Nine Bottles Of Beer," is now at peace and anticipates prosperity. He views last summer's labor deal as a "watershed" event in the history of a sport purportedly drowning in debt.

He envisions an era in which even the San Diego Padres can compete for the pennant. He can, it turns out, see past the end of his nose.

"My life and the life of the game is much different since Aug. 30," Selig said yesterday, referring to the collective bargaining agreement that has recast baseball's financial model. "When we see each other in the course of the next couple years, you'll see it will get better and better and better. I believe that our new system has dealt directly with all of the problems and will give everybody, to use one of my favorite phrases, hope and faith."

I guess this news hasn't reached Oakland yet.

"When I took over (in 1992), we shared $20 million as an industry over and above national revenue – nothing," Selig said. "This year, it will be $258 million. Next year it will be over $300 million.

"The luxury tax threshold – there's only one team over it right now. That, in itself is working (toward parity). Our debt service rule gives the commissioner great authority in terms of how much debt a club can have and how a club is operated. All of those things will take the San Diegos of the world and make them more competitive each year. There isn't a doubt in my mind."

I always get the impression reading Selig's words that I'm listening to Stalin announce a new five-year plan. :-) Central planning can solve everything! Free markets be damned!

"This is a great opportunity right now for this game to move forward," he said. "We are not encumbered by all the travails, all the tensions, all the misunderstandings, all the accusations, all the things that have gone on . . . Not only did we avoid a work stoppage – which would have done incalculable damage to the game – but we dealt with our problems for the first time in our history.

"One of the things baseball did for years on economics – and on a lot of things – was they were never able to confront issues. So the issues kept on getting worse and worse and worse. Some of these things have been painful to confront, but that's why you have a commissioner. That's what you've got to do. You've got to confront the issues. You can't make believe they don't exist."

Baseball's central issue for two decades has been the struggle of small-market teams to remain viable while competing with clubs that can spend them into submission.

"In the '60s and '70s and even the early '80s, it didn't matter if you were in San Diego or New York," Selig said. "But it mattered in the '90s and it mattered a lot in the late '90s. And it mattered a lot in 2000 and 2001."

They didn't confront issues? Free movement for players wasn't an issue? You see, baseball had addressed the big/small market problem in the mid-60's when they instituted the draft. But in doing that, they took away any right for players to pick the team for which they wanted to play. For 100 years, the clubs had screwed the players. And amazingly, during this time that baseball hasn't confronted issues, the sport has grown trememdously.

Selig has his revenue sharing. He'll do very well with that, putting a lousy team on the field in Milwaukee and pocketing the change. It's time for him to step down and let someone who cares more about baseball than his own pocketbook run things.