Features & Columns
An Open Letter to Bud Selig
Illustration by Fred Harper
Dear Bud:
All we want is an answer. One way or the other. We'll be fine. But just make a decision already.
That bitter beer face you make when one of us asks—you know, the one that looks like an old catcher's mitt wearing a toupee—no longer flies. We've been patient, but now we want an answer from you, the man who leached the sanctity out of our national pastime; a commissioner who sat silent and collected nine figures in salary while team owners made millions and the steroid era rendered all of baseball's records irrelevant.
You have left us with a world that props up Jose Canseco as the game's moral compass; a reversal of fortune as comical as Jack Abramoff now carrying the torch to end political skullduggery.
When will the A's be moving to San Jose?
That's the question San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed asked you in a letter two weeks ago. It's a question the mayor, the city of San Jose, the Oakland A's and their fans have been asking for four years, and they deserve an answer. The silence has been deafening.
Way back in 2009, you formed a "blue-ribbon committee" to figure out the best place for the A's to play long term. But we're still not quite sure what a blue-ribbon committee actually does, because the three men you appointed have released as much info as a eunuch circle jerk.
Consider how much time has passed since you formed this blue-ribbon committee. It took the 9/11 Commission less time to issue a public report on how things broke down that fateful day; Obama had been president for all of three months when the committee was formed; eight months after the committee began its fact-finding search, we all still assumed Tiger Woods was a good guy.
