...or impeached. Or shot. Or whatever it is they do to commissioners who turn out to be dumbasses. Astros Friday night: stay up all night while a storm beats the hell out of your city. Satuday day: make provisions for your family while getting yourself together for an unplanned road trip Saturday night: sleep horribly because there's no air conditioning and no power Sunday morning: get up at 5am after precious little sleep in the last two nights, drive to Minute Maid. Get on a bus. Ride to some airport somewhere, board a plane. Sunday afternoon: arrive in Milwaukee a couple of hours before the game One hour later: BP One hour later: "Home" game begins. The stadium has exclusively Cubs fans, your family is back home with no power, you've had no sleep in 48 hours. Cubs Friday night: get a good night's rest after the latest meltdown. Your suckball POS team is 3-7 in its last ten, and you're facing a tough road trip in Houston this Sunday. Saturday: enjoy your complimentary day off. You find out you won't have to go to Houston, after all Sunday: get up around 11am after another good night's rest; drive an hour and a half to Milwaukee, where 26,000 screaming Cub fans await you on this "road" game. Yeah, that's fair. That's "neutral". Can grown men really be this stupid? Fire Bud Selig, a dumbass for the ages.
While I certainly agree that this decision was deplorable and the antithesis of ensuring neutrality (which should be the basis of a commissioner's decision making in his role as arbiter), it is not too difficult to see, given the logistics of the situation, how he would try to take the easy way out and schedules the games in Milwaukee given his previous ties to that organization. It wasn't hard to see coming. The outrage should be directed towards Drayton Mclane who should not have let Selig get away with this crime so easily. I realize there exists some need for diplomacy and compromise in entrepreneurship, but there comes a point in certain circumstances when you just have to stand up for your team and not get walked over. Drayton has demonstrated again why he is a gutless POS.
what, honestly, was a better alternative, msn? i don't like the decision either, but it doesn't sound like selig picked this one over several better options, and mlb may have been hand-cuffed by mclane. mclane should have sent his team (and their familes) to dallas on friday and waited. if he really did wait too long to pull triggers - and did so to preserve 3 home games (and in the fallout, jeopardized at least 1 much more lucurative home playoff game) - then he's just as much to blame.
I'm not in Houston. What is the general reaction from the local sports media there in regards to this? Blame towards Selig?; blame towards Mclane?; apathy?
Are you kidding me? Atlanta. Phoenix. Arlington. Seattle. Tampa/St Pete. Hell, St. Louis would have been *great*, as they hate the Cubs there. ANYWHERE but Chicago or Milwaukee, or Minneapolis, or Detroit. Or just play a double-header on Monday and a game after the season. Bottom line, it's not my job to find the best solution, Ric. It's Bud Selig's job. And he failed, miserably. This "neutral" location is so heavily in favor of Chicago it's ridiculous. National media members are pointing it out. MLB should be embarrassed. I don't think that kind of bias can be rewarded with continued employment. I disagree. Precisely one half of MLB stadiums were vacant yesterday and today, and this "well, we can't predict the weather" is pure unadulterated bull****. Substantiate that, or else it's pointless and irresponsible conjecture. My employer didn't pay me to evacuate my family, but OK. We typically expect FAR more from franchise owners than other business owners, don't we? I'm fine with holding McLane's feet to the fire on this. But pointing to McLane in order to exculpate Brewer Selig is ridiculous. His decision flat-out, hands down influenced the wild card race in a way that unfortunately we'll never be able to measure. Sure, the Astros could certainly have been swept at home (quite likely, given their streaky nature this season). But we'll never know--we'll never know because Selig put the games in Chicago's back yard. Inexcusable. I know I won't see it, but I'd love to see him unemployed. Like at 4:00 today, even.
I've heard this mentioned a few times. How would that have affected the outcome even if some of the players were willing to leave their families alone w/out electricity? Why would that change Selig's decision to play at Miller Park?
Selig clearly was doing what he wanted. McLane wasn't the only one gaffing; MLBPA was chirping even louder. All on deaf ears. His decision was made.
**** Selig. it looks like we are probably going to get 1 or 2 hits for the whole series. Yeah.. neutral my ass. I hope there is a blizzard soon in Chicago so they can play at a "neutral" site like STL.
From what I understand, the players were allowed to take their families with them on this trip, so it's not like they left them behind...at least not all of them.
This particular scenario would have allowed the Astros to "travel better" and essentially go anywhere Saturday instead of having to travel/play Sunday. Of course at the time this decision would have had to be made, it was still possible for Ike to affect Dallas more than it did. They should have simply played an early DH today (start at 10 or 11) and then play the 3rd game on the 29th. I am also confused as to why a "neutral" site was necessary (unless it is just semantics). Everything possible should have been done to give the Astros more of a "home" field advantage.
It should've been Tampa. Unless they had a previously scheduled event there Sunday, there is no excuse they didn't either play a DH there yesterday or play an early game today there. What a bull**** league. I wish I had the discipline to stick to a promise to never give them another penny of my hard-earned money, but I love baseball too much. But if we end up not making the playoffs this year, **** them.
Calling for his firing is over-the-top. I'm just over-the-top pissed about it now; I realize that's unreasonable. I don't wish on anyone the loss of employment. But the decision is not defensible. It's hard core stupid at best, or deviantly pro-Cubs at worst. I may not really want him fired, but I'd piss in his Wheaties in a heartbeat. He should be reprimanded publicly by the MLBPA and the owners' association. The Sporting News, Yahoo!, ESPN, Fox Sports, and whoever else should all print articles blasting him for this insanity.
The fact is...there are no truly neutral sites when it comes to playing the Cubs. Even if the games were played at The Ballpark in Arlington...it would have been 3/4s cub fans. However, at least it would have been in the South...instead of the dip**** North. Somebody needs to re-paint "Yankees go home!" on the Harris County Courthouse in Clear Lake. Long live the Confederacy!
phoenix, arlington and tampa bay are all hosting home games tonight, msn. and they may hate the cubs in st. louis, but do you honestly think cardinal fans would be buying the tickets? it would have been just as pro-cub. as for atlanta, apparently rain was in the forecast. you're not going to ask 2 teams to go somewhere if there's a chance the game won't be played. as for seattle - as rough as the trip to milwaukee likely was, seattle would have been worse – further and you plow through a couple of time zones. is a DH on monday really, ultimately, any better given what these guys went through this weekend? and do you realize you might compromise the game postponing it until season's end? what if chicago has the division wrapped up, their rotation set and their team healthy: do they take a chance and play the regulars or do they play scrubs? and is that fair to milwaukee/philadelphia? look, they could have played these games ANYWHERE; the astro players were in no condition to play them. having to go to milwaukee was not the real tragedy here. so displacing two teams on a moment's notice (including all the logistical planning) to an area where the game may be delayed or even canceled (and possibly having to go through ALL of this again) is bull****? it's been mentioned in every article, msn – he reportedly waited until the last minute hoping the games could still be played here. the chronicle reported it and selig, in an interview with the chronicle, all but substantiated it. well, i'm guessing you don't generate tens of millions of dollars for your employer, either. the family inclusion would have been a "nice" gesture from mclane, given the extraordinary circumstances. msn, i think you're forgetting a bigger factor here, a little storm called ike. there isn't a stadium in baseball that would have lessened the astros' burden; asking them to play ANYWHERE would have been unfair. and yet, based on baseball's tight schedule, there really wasn't an alternative that wasn't equally wrought with issues. in the realm of just baseball, it's an unfortunate situation without any easy answers. milwaukee wasn't ideal; there weren't better alternatives.
the astros actually have a pretty strong following in dallas; but ike's path, and a home game there monday, made BIA impossible.
losing 17 of 20 and then 22 of 31 would have more to do with us missing out on the postseason than these two games in milwaukee. and you know, for all the rancor - we're f'ing 2.5 games back!! not over yet, hombres.....
I disagree that Seattle was not a better alternative. "Plowing through time zones" is something the Astros do all the time. You correctly point out that it's unfair they would have to travel *at all*. Fine. How about travelling to one of the 29 (14 available) MLB cities where they *WON"T* be jeered and booed the whole damn game?? Defend this all you like, Ric. It's bull****.
