It's Time For Bud Selig To Become a Man

I don't need to tell anyone that the economy is in ruins right now. Teams all over professional sports are seeing their season ticket renewal numbers sliding south and their merchandise sales stagnant at best.

In baseball, the rumor mills are full of hot items about teams in small and middle markets looking to unload any contract of length or substance as early as the beginning of June (Jake Peavy) for the sake of saving their bottom line.

Fans just aren't spending the money this year.

At the same time that money is becoming valuable again, Major League Baseball is dealing with an enormous marketing issue still. Steroids have hit hit two of the top five hitters in the game in Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, and people are actually starting to wonder what others truths Jose Canseco might share with us.

Other big time stars, like Derrek Lee, David Ortiz, and Matt Holliday are off to awful starts. Lee should have probably gone on the disabled list, Ortiz has and is now batting sixth, and Holliday is trying to find the fences.

The impact players of the game, other than Albert Pujols, aren't carrying their end of the bargain for baseball.

While the money isn't there and some big time players are either guilty of doping or just not playing well, there's another elephant in the room for baseball to deal with: the attitude of umpires.

On Wednesday, Carlos Zambrano had a soon-to-be-legendary eruption after a call that he disagreed with at the plate. During his tirade, the home plate umpire seemed to initiate contact with Zambrano before ejecting him. Zambrano would then mockingly eject the umpire.

On a regular basis, umpires are trying to become part of the show at major league games. While many conspiracy theorists (Milton Bradley) will say some umpires have an agenda, there's a larger issue with umpires provoking already hostile players like Zambrano.

How many times will a pitcher say something about a pitch, only to have the plate umpire raises his mask and shouts back at the mound?

It's become so cliche that some national sportscasters will jokingly refer to a fantasy ejection pool, saying "If you had Bob Davidson in the ejection pool today..."

So right now baseball has economic issues, a tarnished image, and officials trying to become part of the spectacle. How on earth is the game going to take care of itself and preserve it's immediate and long-term future?

That's the job of the commissioner.

Bud Selig has done some wonderful things for the game of baseball, and some things that make me want to vomit. Overall, his tenure will likely carry a scarlet letter for the Steroids Era, but will also have a little gold star for bringing on the wild card and interleague play.

It is now, in this tumultuous time in the game's history, that Selig needs to find his spine and stand tall. He can take swift, decisive action to rectify many of the game's ills in one shot.

Selig needs to call representatives for the Player's Association and the umpire's union together into a room and explain to them exactly what is going to happen moving forward. He needs to impose a positive will on the game to make it better, and now is the time to do it.

What's going to happen? Are the umpires going to boycott? Get other umpires! And would the players be stupid enough to strike in the midst of this economy, when most Americans think they're overpaid, pampered babies anyway? I doubt it.

If I were Selig, I would not propose but institute severe action to clean up the extracurricular garbage that's haunting the game. Some examples of steps I would like to see are:

• Monthly random drug testing for every player on every team during the regular season. A piggyback testing policy that every player will be subjected to two random tests during the off-season.
• Umpires will no longer be initiators of extracurricular action during games. It is the job of the officials of any sport to be above the emotion of the game, removed from the heat of battle. There needs to be very specific, and heavy, penalties for umpires that provoke any issues with players or managers.
• A panel of representatives from the players and umpires union, as well as third party individuals (perhaps from the professional media, perhaps from the fans) would be part of a board that would police the integrity of the game. If an altercation like the one in Chicago breaks out, this group would review the situation to determine fault and discipline.

Once these steps were taken, just allow the players to do what they do best: put on an incredible display of athletic ability. Let's not forget that these are professional athletes that play "America's Past time."

Let's get rid of the junk surrounding a beautiful sport and get back to the innocence of the game. It's time for Selig to man-up and do his job. Now is the time.