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What Baseball Needs Is An Actual Leader

Baseball fans don’t get a commissioner and neither do baseball players, unfortunately. The system is set up such that the person entrusted with presiding over the well-being of the sport is — oops, how did that happen? — a shill for one of the parties, namely the 30 owners who need support the least but get all of it anyway.

Was it always like this? As a young adult my view of A. Bartlett Giamatti was that he wanted the best for baseball itself, meaning for the fans, the players, the owners, the game. Or maybe it just takes more than 5 months to show your true colors; sadly, Giamatti died unexpectedly of a heart attack less than half a year into his tenure as baseball’s seventh commissioner.