While The Game Goes Up in Smoke

Last month, New York Mets outfielder Vince Coleman walked out of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles with intent.

He hopped into the back of a car being driven by Dodger outfielder Eric Davis and prepared to leave the stadium. As he did, Coleman--in a despicable, incomprehensible act of pure contempt and childishness-lit a firecracker he was carrying and tossed it over a chain-link fence into a crowd of Dodger fans.

The firecracker went off, and there was, perhaps as Coleman had hoped, quite a show. But not the kind of show human beings (Coleman not included) like to watch. Several people were injured, including a two-year-old.

Coleman and Davis just sped away, off to an outdoor barbecue at Davis' home. Coleman drove off, according to people in the crowd where the firecracker went off, laughing.

It's hard to know exactly what Coleman was laughing at. It couldn't have been his performance on the field, which has been so poor that the Mets, I think, would stand a chance in court if they sued him for beach of his $4 million a year contract. And the outfielder was probably not laughing at the injuries he caused, because Coleman dashed away so fast that he hardly knew anything was wrong on the other side of the chain-link fence.

Maybe, just maybe, Coleman was laughing for an entirely different reason. Maybe Coleman knew that with baseball's current vacuum of leadership, there was no one running. The Grand Old Game to make sure he wouldn't get away with it.

Last year, the owners of the 26 major league baseball teams, in gross violation of major league baseball policy and tradition, fired Fay Vincent as baseball commissioner. In the ensuing months, those owners have moved to destroy popular support for The Game throughout the country. And by doing so, they have seriously compromised its future.

Earlier this spring, the owners negotiated a new network television contract which reduces the number of games available to viewers and provides the owners themselves with no money up front. Viewed by someone in their right mind it's obviously a bad deal for fans (who won't have access to as many games as before) and owners (who won't have as much money for player salaries).

In fact, the contract leaves the responsibility for finding television advertisers with the baseball owners. This group of guys can't run baseball teams effectively, which is supposed to be their business. Why should they be able to sell ads any better?

The new contract's major "improvement"--a plan to expand the October playoffs to include eight teams--will only further serve to hurt the integrity of the game. Baseball remains the only sport where the regular season, with its 162 games and rigorous travel, means something.

Under the new plan, it is conceivable for a team that loses more than it wins to finish second place in its division, get hot for three weeks and win the World Series. Of course, the World Series won't be much the same under the new contract either. October heroes are thing of a post; the Fall Classic will end in November.

Bud Selig, who helped negotiate the plan, is the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. He also is the de facto commissioner of baseball, named so by the owners after their coup of Vincent.

Selig is the ultimate symbol of what's wrong with baseball. He's a hypocrite of the first order, extolling the virtues of baseball's tradition while negotiating a plan to undo its sacred playoff system.

Selig says he is just being realistic about baseball's mounting problems with finances and popularity. One supposes he should know about such problems from the way he has mismanaged his own franchise. The Brewers, in fact, currently have the worst record in the American League and a severely dwindling attendance. This in baseball-mad Milwaukee, where fan support for the Brewers has usually held strong through thick and thin.

Of course, Selig has a lot of bad ideas. He was a strong supporter of the addition of two new team to the league this year, the Colorado Rockies and the Florida Marlins. These teams bought revenue to the owners, and minor league caliber baseball to Denver and Miami.

Of course, both states already had actual minor league teams. Now they have more expensive ones.

So, the rest of baseball suffers. The addition of two teams has hurt the quality of play around the league. There are too many players who can't compete effectively on the major league level toiling in the bigs.

And the fans suffer too. After the initial excitement and newness of these teams wears off, people will stop coming. Why should a Denverite pay $10 to watch the Colorado Rockies, essentially a Triple A team?

The baseball owners named Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis as commissioner 73 years ago because they wanted an independent authority to restore integrity to The Game in the wake of 1919 World Series, which was intentionally thrown by members of the Chicago White Sox.

Landis, like future commissioners, had authority to act in the best interests of the game. He could have (and as a man with knowledge of the law, would have) suspended Coleman or even banned him from baseball. He, like the commissioners who followed him, had the authority to protect baseball from the people who play The Game and own the teams.

Without a true commissioner, for example, owners regularly violate the public trust. The San Diego Padres owner, Tom Werner, who is a TV producer, has deliberately run the franchise into the ground. Werner began the season with the National League's batting champion (Gary Sheffield) and home run leader (Fred Midriff) on his roster.

Because he felt the salaries they are being paid are too expensive, Werner has traded both away for a pittance. The not-so-secret reason: Werner wants to make the team more attractive to buyers. Damn the fans and ticket holders, who were promised a team with Sheffield and McGriff in literature distributed by the team before the season.

A strong commissioner would have stepped in and not permitted Werner to make these trades. Selig, however, has had nothing but praise for Werner. It figures.

The time has come for those with some authority over The Game to play hardball. If baseball has not restored a commissioner with truly independent authority and absolute power to office by the World Series, the United State Congress ought to move to revoke baseball's antitrust exemption.

The competition would be healthy for the majors. And, I suspect, anyone who had he chutzpah to start a new league would soon see thousand of frustrated fans, including this one, arrive at the ticket window.

Still, some baseball owners persist in the belief that there is nothing he matter with their sport. Some even believe major league baseball is on the rebound. The point to increased attendance in many major league parks during the 1993 season as a prime example of this trend.

But the trend doesn't exist. Baseball fans are as much turned off by the way the sport is mis-run as they are attracted to the game. The number of people attending baseball games as a percentage of the total urban population is not increasing, despite what those who run baseball would have us believe.

The advantage of having a commissioner is to have an advocate for fans and for The Game, Baseball has neither.

Now, we have a national pastime in which Bud Selig looks after the owners, an umpires union looks after the men in blue and a player's union protects criminals such as Vince Coleman.

But no one exists to protect the fans. To those of us who love the game, the combined effect of all these problems and administrative missteps is terrifying. It feels a little bit as if someone had thrown a lighted firecracker in our faces.

Maybe Coleman knew that with baseball's current vacuum of leadership, there was no one running the Grand Old Game to make sure he wouldn't get away with it.