Will Joe Girardi's Protest From Last Night Be Successful?

Via Marc Carig, in order for the Yankees to win their protest of last night's game, the commissioner's office would have to rule that the Manny Delcarmen getting unlimited time to warm up "adversely affected" the Yankees' chances to win the game:

In all protested games, the decision of the League President shall be final.
Even if it is held that the protested decision violated the rules, no replay of the game will be ordered unless in the opinion of the League President the violation adversely affected the protesting team’s chances of winning the game.

If the league does determine there was a detrimental effect, the game could be restarted from the point of the infraction. Considering that the Yankees were sitting on a five run lead at the time, there's a good chance that they could lock down the victory if given a second chance.

It's pretty clear that Sox pitching coach John Farrell signaled to the bullpen before telling the umpire that Beckett was hurt. Girardi isn't disputing whether the injury was valid, just that the call was made before the umpire was informed of the injury.

There is a ton of subjectivity involved here. How will the league interpret the word "adversely"? Delcarmen getting as much time as he needed to warm up obviously wasn't the reason that the Red Sox were able to come back, but it definitely helped them stop the bleeding to some extent. Getting to face a guy who was only allowed to throw eight warm up pitches would certainly have been an advantage for the Yankees, particularly if Francona chose to temporarily insert a position player instead. So by a strict definition, it did "adversely affect" their chances of winning the game, however infinitesimally.

Although it doesn't say it in the rule book, I'm guessing the commissioner will have the latitude to determine degrees of adversity. In other words, was the advantage the Yankees lost enough to warrant restarting the game from that point? Will Bud Selig take into account that the Yankees were winning by five runs at the time? Will he note that the Sox came all the way back and won by just one run? It's a logistical mess to restart the game and you'd have to assume that the league would lean towards avoiding it if the decision is close.

Bud Selig works in mysterious ways, but unfortunately, I'm pretty sure this one isn't going to get overturned.

Pondering What Might Have Been

Last week, the media and the blogosphere dedicated a lot of time to marking the twenty year anniversary of Pete Rose agreeing to a lifetime ban from baseball in the face of overwhelming evidence that he gambled on the game and gambled on his own team. ESPN showed an Outside the Lines piece that actually managed to humanize the insufferable Joe Morgan, who was literally moved to tears over his frustration with the arrogance and stubbornness his friend and former teammate has carried himself with in these last two decades.

This post isn't intended to wade into the quagmire that is the Rose debate. Rather, it's to point out that yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of the death of former Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, the other principal character in the Greek tragedy that is the Rose banishment. The anniversary of the death of Rose's baseball career passed with much fanfare. The anniversary of the death of Giamatti passed with nary a whisper.

Baseball lends itself to stories and fables and legends and hyperbole. That's the way it's always worked, particularly with the media. As such, the legend goes that the toll of the Dowd Report and the Rose ban killed Giamatti just eight days after the suspension was announced. The truth of the matter is Giamatti was overweight, smoked heavily, and suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. I'm sure the stress of the summer of 1989 weighed heavily upon Giamatti, but it certainly wasn't the only cause of his tragic and untimely death.

Last night, as I drove past the sign for the Giamatti Little League Center on my way to my hockey game, I thought about what might have been had Giamatti not died less than a year into his tenure as Commissioner. Several others have had similar thoughts of late. Rose and his camp insist that Giamatti would have granted Rose reinstatement over time. Fay Vincent, who served as Giamatti's Deputy Commissioner and played a major role in the Rose investigation, insists that never would have happened.

In February, following the Alex Rodriguez steroid admission, Yale Magazine ran a piece from Giamatti friend and former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. It implied that Giamatti was planning to tackle drug testing head on after the Rose situation was settled, and suggested that perhaps the PED scandal of the last twenty years could have been avoided had Giamatti been successful. And maybe Giamatti would have made an impact. He had the backing of the owners. He had taken a hard line against a union before in his days as Yale President. He had gained a reputation as a disciplinarian in his time as National League President, handing down heavy suspensions to Rose for an ump bump and Dodgers reliever (and former Yankee) Jay Howell for applying pine tar to a ball during the NLCS. But we'll never know if Giamatti would have taken on drug testing nor how successful he would have been.

As for me, I wonder how other things would have played out had Giamatti lived to serve a full term. Would Fay Vincent still have been named his successor? If so, would he have been as overmatched in that role had he been able to spend more than just a few months working in Major League Baseball first? Would the owners still have forced him out? Could the Bud Selig era have been avoided? How about the 1994 strike? The Wild Card and divisional realignment? Would the ridiculous All-Star Game/homefield advantage policy still be in place? Would baseball have expanded twice more? Would contraction have even been discussed? Would the Nationals still be in Montreal? Would the Giants or White Sox have moved to St. Petersburg after all? Would revenue sharing have been put in place sooner? Would it not have been put in place at all?

Recent Yankee history might have been much different as well. In February 1990, Fay Vincent handed George Steinbrenner a lifetime ban for his hiring of gambler Howard Spira to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield and his foundation. The ban was lifted three years later, after Vincent had been forced out of office and Steinbrenner friend Bud Selig was the acting Commissioner. Would Giamatti have handed down the same sentence? If so would he have reinstated Steinbrenner at any point?

It's all useless conjecture, but it's also intriguing to wonder what might have been. While Rose, Vincent, and Thornburgh all knew Giamatti to some extent, none of them can truly know what he would have done had he served longer as Commissioner, and neither do I. What we do know is that Bart Giamatti died too soon, and it was baseball's loss. It's unfortunate that the baseball media didn't see fit to remember that yesterday.

Welcome To Club 103, Fellas

Back when the news of Manny's positive test in 2003 came to the forefront, I asked "why couldn't it have been Ortiz?", but I must admit that this isn't nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be.

Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, the sluggers who propelled the Boston Red Sox to end an 86-year World Series championship drought and to capture another title three years later, were among the roughly 100 Major League Baseball players to test positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003, according to lawyers with knowledge of the results.

First of all, thanks to the lawyers (Yankee fans, presumably) who chose two leak these two (and only these two) names out of the 98 or so that were still under wraps. If only the guy who conducted the Mitchell Report had any connections within the Red Sox organization, you might not have had to risk being held in contempt of court!

I think we can cast aside the notion that Manny's most recent test was an isolated incident. In light of this new information, given how steady his career numbers have been, it's hard to imagine when he was clean. With Ortiz on the other hand, his transition from Minnesota to Boston (in 2003) draws a pretty clear line. Whatever. Here's the fun part....

Hey David, are you ready to taste your own medicine and take a voluntary one year suspension?

"I would suggest everybody get tested, not random, everybody," he said. "You go team by team. You test everybody three, four times a year and that's about it."

And if a player tests positive for steroids?

"Ban 'em for the whole year," the slugger said.

Oops.

Objectively speaking, there is something pretty despicable about the fact that these guys were told the tests would remain anonymous, and now, one or two at a time they are leaking out like death by 1,000 papercuts. It's not fair, but like Omar Minaya would say, you can't put the cat back in the bottle.

The moral of today's news isn't that the Red Sox Championship is tainted, it's that we now understand the entire sport to be slightly more dirty than we previously assumed. It's not a good thing for the sport to have the accomplishments of the best players of an era systematically knocked down one by one. It's not going to be fun to look back in 10 or 15 years, when what timeframe actually defined the "steroids era" begins to crystalize, and realize that very few of the remarkable accomplishments we saw were as they seemed at the time.

Let's move on.

Matt Garza: Not A Genius

Look Out! (Sorry, still working on my Ken Singleton impression)

This is what Matt Garza had to say after hitting Mark Teixeira on the arm in the top of the 5th inning last night:

Tampa Bay Rays RHP Matt Garza acknowledged it was more than coincidence than he hit Mark Teixeira the inning after Yankees starter Joba Chamberlain threw a pitch at the head of Evan Longoria, and noted the Yankees threw inside to Longoria and hit him Monday too.

If you'll recall, Chamberlain went up and in on Longoria in the 4th inning on the first pitch of the at bat. Longoria then popped out to Robinson Cano on the next one to end the inning, and broke his bat by slamming it on the ground in disgust. He was hit by Jonathan Albaldejo on Monday.

I just kind of got tired of people brushing [Evan Longoria] back. It’s about time someone made a statement. They did it on Monday night and we didn’t do anything, they didn’t do it too much (Tuesday) and (Chamberlain) did it again tonight. I hate to be that guy, but someone had to take a stand and say, “You know, we’re tired of it.” You can go after our best guy, well, we’ll make some noise too, and that’s what happened.

I'm sure you really "hate to be that guy", Matt. Especially when you consider that (A) Longoria didn't even get hit, (B) no one made you throw at Teixeira and (C) no one would have known it was intentional until you started running your mouth. It was a good pitch up and in, which barely got a piece of Teix. I personally didn't think there was any malice behind it because it hitting Teix brought A-Rod up to the plate with two men on. Not exactly optimal strategy there. A-Rod ended up striking out, but only after a 9 pitch battle.

At least now everyone will know how tough you are while you're serving that six game suspension, Matt. Enjoy!

A Hypothetical Ponderance - How Much For A Year Behind Bars?

This one comes to you from a follow-up post Jason at IIATM,S did about his new site "Vote For Manny". The original post suggested that people vote Manny Ramirez for the All-Star Game mostly to promote chaos and see what would happen if Manny did work his way into the top three vote-getters. I wholeheartedly support the movement, mainly because I'm in favor of anything that makes Bud Selig uncomfortable. Get out there and vote, friends. 

In under one day, the site got some serious publicity and with that came lots of people who took the name of the idea at face value and left a lot of stupid anonymous comments and probably some angry email in Jason's inbox. All of that caused Jason to put up this post Wednesday night, clarifying his intentions. (Of course, some people are still missing the point.) 

As so often happens, I found a really interesting nugget in Jason's post. Trying to frame the usage of PED's in over the years in baseball, he asks:

Here's my question: If you were promised $200 million once you were done serving a 1 year jail sentence, would you serve the time? Would you risk the shame and embarrassment for generational wealth?

This is an extreme example, obviously. For most players the question would have been closer to "several million dollars if there was a chance of being sent to prison for a year", but I like Jason's hypothetical better. 

How much money would you need in return for one year in prision?

Let's assume that it's a maximum security joint and you go in a week from now. There are no TVs. You have a roommate and it's not John Coffey. No conjugal visits. You are in with the regular inmate population, and they all think that you committed, say, armed robbery or whatever crime you choose. We've all heard about the terrible things that happen in jail and you get no guarantees on your safety and no special treatment. Odds are you will make it out alive, but there's no promises you do. 

You eat the slop they serve you. Your toilet is right in your cell. You have to listen to whatever inmates who are serving life sentences scream throughout the cell block to each other at night. You can't chisel your way our behind a Rita Hayworth poster and you don't have the Squirrelmaster to protect you. Michael Scofield isn't bailing you out of this one. You are locked up in the clink, behind bars for one full year, no getting out early for good behavior. 

How much would it take for you to trade in one year of your freedom and dignity? 

-----

I'll go first - For me, $200 million would be an absolute no brainer. Lock me up! But I think it's more interesting if you treat it like the Price is Right: You can't go over. Make your lowest offer and if it's too high, it doesn't get accepted. 

I'm going with twenty five million United States Dollars, after taxes. I'm 24 years old and single, so I don't have a family I would be pining to see on a daily basis when I was locked up. It would be like doing all the work you would ever have to do in your life in a one year span. Except instead of "work", you'd be reading books, doing a shitload of push-ups and trying to steer clear of dudes named "Roach" who could potentially shiv you in the courtyard.  

I took three one week intensive courses in college where you take the same class for 5 days from 9-5 and receive full three credits upon completion. Sure, listening to a professor drone on about fucking Discrete Probability for two three and a half hour sessions a day was mind numbing. However, every memory of those classses were blocked from my memory within about a week and during the following semester, I didnt have any classes before 10:30 and had every Friday off. 

Money can't buy you happiness, but it can certainly buy you freedom. $25 million bucks isn't that much money, when you consider that 11 guys on the Yankees are in the middle of deals with higher total values (and they get to play baseball, not go to jail). But even if you could get a 1% a year return on it, that's a $250,000 per annum, and you would be able to take advantage of it 24/7/365. Travel, write, golf, get a couple graduate degrees, take a badass baseball road trip, whatever. 

Your turn. 

Watch Every Yankees Game! (Unless Of Course You Can't)

I got an email from the Yankees yesterday, informing me that I could "Watch every Yankees game on MLB.tv Premium":

You don't say!

They use lots of fonts and fades and flashy graphics, but tucked away in the fine print just underneath the bright green buttons where you can buy the service, it says "Blackout and other Restrictions Apply".

Hey Yankees, guess where probably 90% of the people on this email list live? In your fucking broadcast territory! It's not that the headline is misleading, it's the exact opposite of the truth for the vast majority of the recipients of this blast. Is that not a little disingenuous?

The people out of the market have probably looked into how they would be able to watch the games, don't you think? I'm not breaking new ground here, nor is this going to make a difference, but they should just stream the commercials through the feeds and dump the ridiculous blackout restrictions. It's bullshit. They have customers who are willing to pay for the service and I'm sure any of those cable networks would be open to having their viewing audiences increased if the viewers were shown the ads. Work it out. I blame Bud Selig.

And in the interest of full disclosure, they should probably be more up front with what the blackout restrictions entail. The price is high enough where the customer deserves to be made aware that if they are in their home market, they are going to be dropping $110 for everyone else's games and their team's radio feed.

Grandpa Selig Doesn't Like Your Tone, Smart Alec

Wallace Matthews of Newsday had the esteemed pleasure of conducting a lenghty telephone interview with the Bud Selig in which he once again assumes that baseball fans are a bunch of morons:

I don't want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn't care about it. That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I'm sensitive to the criticism. The reason I'm so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we've come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.

Hey Bud, just because the sport has been successful over you tenure doesn't mean that you aren't responsible for tacitly allowing steroid use. So just because you've came "further than anyone ever dreamed possible", which is highly debatable, it means you shouldn't be questioned on some rather obvious mistakes you made?

Remember back in 1998, when the whole fucking sport was revitalized BECAUSE of steroid use? Take a look around at the economy, I don't hear financial CEOs saying "Look at where we took the economy, the Dow was at 14,000! That's why I'm so frustrated, cause everyone just wants to talk about this sub-prime mess!!"

A lot of people say we should have done this or that, and I understand that. They ask me, 'How could you not know?' and I guess in the retrospect of history, that's not an unfair question. But we learned and we've done something about it. When I look back at where we were in '98 and where we are today, I'm proud of the progress we've made.

You know what a significant part of that progess stemmed from? PEOPLE HITTING HOME RUNS WHILE THEY WERE ON STEROIDS.

Starting in 1995, I tried to institute a steroid policy. Needless to say, it was
met with strong resistance. We were fought by the union every step of the way.

Yup, that's the whole story. Bud Selig tirelessly campaigned for a steroid testing poilcy, but the Union wouldn't budge. You are the head of the League, Allan Huber Selig. It takes two sides to reach and agreement, and you weren't willing to meet to Union's demands to make the testing a reality. Take some responsibilty for what occured under your watch and the fact that the two sides couldn't come together. And aside from trying to insitiute a testing policy, what did you do about it? That was 1995, and up until 2003, the answer is "not a whole lot".

Selig said he consulted with a few coaches and executives in the late '90's including John Schuerholz, Doug Melvin and Brian Cashman:

They all told me none of them ever saw it in the clubhouses and that their players never spoke about it. "[Padres CEO] Sandy Alderson, as good a baseball man as you'll find, was convinced it was the bat. Others were convinced it was the ball. So a lot of people didn't know.

Wow... that's shocking. You mean Brain Cashman didn't come out and say, "Listen, Bud, there are at least 10 guys in my clubhouse on the juice. Clemens... holy shit! The guy pumps himself full of Winstrol twice an hour. Sometimes he just walks around with an IV drip."

Secondly, Brain Cashman probably never did see it in the Clubhouse and no one ever told him about it. That's not how it went down. Players knew what they were doing was wrong and a took the steroids at their own homes or in private places with their personal trainers.

It would be as if I went to West Baltimore and said "I heard there is a huge herion and crack epidemic going on around here, but when I was walking around the streets in my fucking tweed blazer and Brooks Brother's slacks, I wasn't so much as offered a hit! For goodness sake, I didn't even see one person shooting up or smoking rock!"

Great job Bud, give yourself another raise this year, you greedy, evil imbecile. Then die in your sleep.

#105

Everyone is talking about how the other 103 players besides A-Rod on that list have to be sweating it out.

How about George Mitchell? The egg is already all over his face and when David Ortiz or any other Red Sock pops up on that list he's going to get an carton's worth more. There are 103 more names to come, it's going to happen. His "objectivity" will be destroyed and everything that went into the stupid fucking Mitchell Report will be called into question.

The only silver lining is that this makes Bud Selig look like even more of a ignoramus.

Selig Earned $18.5MM in 2007

According to Sam Borden (who is running the show at LoHud while Peter Abraham goes on vacation to chill with hobbits), Bud Selig made $18.5MM in the fiscal year that ended on October 31, 2007.

This includes $17.47MM in base compensation with an additional $461,540 in employee benefit contributions and $422,590 in expense accounts and additional benefits. The amount was a 22% increase over the previous year.

This begs the question: What has Selig done to deserve a 22% increase?

And are you telling me that in order to make this amount of money that all that I have to do is become a used car salesman and bitch about player salaries? Maybe law school was not the answer. Also, Jay, I'm sorry but I may have to start up my own blog at http://www.ridiculouslyoverpaidmlbexecutives.blogspot.com/

Bud Selig For A Day

Jason at It Is About The Money, Stupid was kind enough to guest-post our suggestion for what to do if we were commissioner of Major League Baseball for a day. It includes a little of our email exchange that led up to the post.

He originally asked me to write a few sentences, I obliged, and then asked if he had any edits or suggestions. He offered some direction, I asked Will and Cliff for some input, and pretty soon the offering was almost 400 words. Check it out if you get a chance, and I'll re-post it here later on, just for the record.

Check out Jason's blog in general, too. (Not just because he was the first person to link to us). He's a Yankees guy, but always has a unique and objective take on tough issues like Stadium financing and other stuff throughout the league.

Baseball's Real Anti-Christ Dies

Carl Pohlad, billionaire, cheapskate and worst owner in the MLB died yesterday. According to 2008 rankings by Forbes.com, Pohlad’s net worth of $3.6 billion was 102nd in the nation. Still, his teams often had some of the lowest payrolls in baseball.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig called Pohlad “a true leader in our sport for the past 25 years.”

“Since the day Carl Pohlad entered Major League Baseball, he made significant contributions to our game,” Selig said. “His devotion to the Minnesota Twins, the Twin Cities and Major League Baseball was remarkable. In my long career, I have never met a more loyal and caring human being.

Gotta love Selig's crap.

Significant contributions to baseball? Name one.

Loyal? Twins fans hated him.

Caring? Put your money where your mouth is.

“I live and die by every pitch,” Pohlad once told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I want so badly for them to win. ... If it isn’t competitive and you don’t have a team with character, it won’t be any fun.”

Pohlad had volunteered his team as a contraction candidate in return for a $150 million buyout from his fellow owners.

The Twins got the go-ahead from the state in 2006 for a $522 million stadium paid for mostly by a county sales tax. Pohlad's contribution was about $130 million.

Instead of putting revenue sharing money back into the organization, Pohlad pocketed it.

Twins fans should be rejoicing right now. There can be no worse owner than Pohlad.

Everybody loves to criticize the Steinbrenner family for their spending. But as Jay has previously stated, they put a quality product on the field for they fans, are not afraid to spend the extra few bucks and spends THEIR money, not the public's, on their ball team.

Contrary to what everybody says, this is a great day for baseball.

Collusion or Delusion? [Follow Up]

In doing some more research on the topic of my previous post, I came across this article by Tim Marchman published in the National Review, back in December of 2003. He (not surprisingly) goes into more depth about the history of collusion in MLB than I did, and adds that joint holdouts were another big reason for the inclusion of the anti-collusion language in the CBA. He also says:

It was for violating this deal in the 1980s that owners agreed in the early 1990s to pay the players $280 million, a payment which drove expansion as owners sought to recoup the money by charging huge fees for the rights to new teams. Sandy Koufax decides he'd like to get paid something like what he's worth, and 40 years later you get to watch the Florida Marlins cavorting around in teal uniforms; what better illustration of the law of unintended consequences?

See what you can learn on these here Internets? The impetus of his post were "the ominous shadows of collusion falling across this weekend's winter meetings in New Orleans [in 2003]". These "shadows" stemmed from the exploitation of a seeming loophole the owners found in the CBA. At the time, the MLBPA was considering filing a grievance alleging that the owners were flooding the markets with free agents, according to Marc Edleman.

In his 2005 paper "Has Collusion Returned To Baseball?" Edleman details how, following the 2002 World Series, many teams began to talk about shedding payroll. Then, on Dec 20th, clubs simultaneously non-tendered 46 arbitration eligible players including Pudge Rodirguez and other top level talent, thereby devaluing the price of all free agents (Edleman gives specific examples if you have time to read the essay). This also redefined that year's "fair-market value" and adversely affected outcomes of the hearings of the players who accepted arbitration.

Edleman says, "Federal antitrust law finds that an agreement to effect price exists even when there is a tacit or inferred agreement", and cites two cases involving American Tobacco and Monsanto (Sidenote: watch The Corporation) as indicators that the arbitrator may rule against the owners. He concludes:

When considering both the documented series of events that occurred during baseball’s 2002–03 off-season and their economic effects, it seems plausible that a baseball grievance arbitrator may find that Major League Baseball clubs once again violated baseball’s “collusion clause”.

This was of course written before the decision was handed down, and he was right to take an somewhat ambiguous stance.

Marchman's take was different, essentially dismissing the charges of collusion (also before any ruling had been handed down). He proposes a hypothetical situation in which two GMs are talking about each others arbitration cases and who they will or will not non-tender that year. He deduces that similar scenarios were probably unfolding at the time in team offices throughout the league, one at a time, but was likely not in violation of the CBA.

The owners did have to pay, but only $12M, and with no admission of guilt.

In light of this, the circumstances I laid out yesterday seem pretty frivolous and almost certainly won't result in any judgment against the owners, considering they non-tendered 46 players on the same fucking day, and didn't have to admit any guilt.

I just really don't like the thinly veiled, tacit encouragement to scale back spending that Selig endorsed when he asked Volcker to address the owners and executives. Like I said in the previous post, maybe the owners would have come to that conclusion anyway. So why allow the appearance of impropriety? Perhaps Bud could have presented Volcker as a resource for the owners to contact individually if they had specific questions.

It just gives a lot of credence to the sentiment that since Selig was an owner, he is now a stooge for the owners. Baseball will be better off if their next commissioner has the betterment of the game in mind, instead of the interests of the owners alone.

Collusion or Delusion?

The word "collusion" gets thrown around a lot in baseball circles, most recently in reference to this gentleman, and shortly before that, this guy and as Joe said in the comments it's only a matter of time before it's said in conjunction with Manny. In all three cases, I would tend to take things at face value and conclude that these are 30 teams all acting rationally and coming to the same conclusions.

An interesting fact that I was unaware of: It was Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale who created the need for these regulations by demanding joint negotiations with the Dodgers prior to the 1966 season (Wikipedia). As a result of the leverage provided by these transparent negotiations, the two pitchers received the two largest contracts in baseball history at the time. The owners were obviously none too pleased, and wanted to ensure this was not allowed to happen again.

In 1968, when Marvin Miller negotiated the first Collective Bargaining Agreement, he ensured that the owners were not allowed to collude either. The final language in the CBA reads "Players shall not act in concert with other Players and Clubs shall not act in concert with other Clubs."

According to Roger I. Abrams in his book Legal Bases, the owners didn't see how this restriction could ever apply to them. They were wrong. In the age of free agency, players gained the upper hand and were now able to negotiate with all other teams, and the resulting competition drove salaries upward, theoretically.

In 1986, a year when only four free agents switched teams and free agent salaries declined by 16%, the Player's Association filed a grievance against the owners, claiming that they had been acting together so as not to bid for each others players. The arbitration process consisted of 32 days of hearings spread out over almost a year, and in the end Arbitrator Tom Roberts ruled in favor of the players. Again according to Legal Bases, the rationale was that:

"Reaching a formal agreement was only one of many ways for two or more parties to act in concert. Some 'common scheme or plan' would be sufficient to provide a violation of that parties' bargain."

Which makes me think back to this. Remember when Bud Selig had ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker speak to owners and executives of all 30 teams in November?

For roughly 45 minutes. According to several people who attended the meeting, Volcker discussed what led to the current economic plight and where things might be headed. His assessment was not upbeat, the attendees said.

At the end of his presentation, Volcker took several questions from owners and officials but did not specifically address how the economy could affect the 30 teams, big market and small, in the months to come.

Those who spoke about Volcker’s remarks did so on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be linked to the public discussion of a private meeting.

The off-season was already under way, but basically no free agent signings had occurred yet. On a certain level, you have to think that Selig knew that Volcker's assessment wasn't going to be "upbeat". They certainly must have spoken recently about the state of the economy before Selig asked him to address the owners.

Selig said he first broached the idea of having Volcker address the owners when he saw him at a World Series game last month.

You think they might have had some sort of a discussion about the economy when they ran into each other at the World Series? The World Series obviously took place in October, a month when the market posted triple digit fluctuations in 20 out of 23 days of trading. If Selig respected Volcker's opinion enough to have him address the franchise owners of his mega-billion dollar corporation, then he would surely have sought some expert insight in such turbulent financial times. Men of much smaller intellects and bank accounts were discussing the economy at that time. It was the most important and prevalent conversation echoing throughout the country and had been since the Lehman bankruptcy over a month before.

So what I'm getting at is... doesn't that sound like "acting in concert" or at least promoting or encouraging "a common scheme or plan"? Not surprisingly, neither Selig or Volcker have commented on the what was said during the 45 minute address. Even if Volcker didn't "specifically address how the economy could affect the 30 teams", doesn't this at least create the appearance of impropriety?

Maybe teams would have come to the same conclusions and almost universally ratcheted down spending (save for the Yankees, who have historically taken their own stance against the MLB). But if you were an executive or owner, wouldn't you be more reluctant to spend after hearing a pessimistic assessment of the economy from an ex-Federal Reserve Chairman who had "warned against the credit collapse for several years"?