Commissioner Must Stop Bad Winter Moves

There's plenty of precedent for the Commissioner of Baseball to block team activities "in the best interests of baseball." It's just that THIS commissioner has no spine.

The New York Yankees, brandishing their billions like Las Vegas gangsters, are rounding up all the best players, literally trying to buy a pennant and bury their rivals before the 2009 season even starts. CC Sabathia AND A.J. Burnett? Gimme a break. How about letting the other teams bid on one or two quality players for a change.

More precedent for Bud Lite to consider: in 1939, the American League passed a rule barring the pennant-winning team from making trades (there was no free agency then or it certainly would have been included). Sure enough, the Yankees failed to win the 1940 AL flag, losing out to the Detroit Tigers and enabling baseball to maintain some level of parity at the time.

Had Burnett gone to the Braves, as had been rumored the day before the Yankees literally stole him, he would have been the No. 1 starter. Now he's no better than No. 2, and possibly No. 3 if Wang returns from injury. But Burnett, admitting he was no all-around athlete, said he chose the Yanks because he didn't want to bat or run the bases, as he would have had to do in the DH-less National League.

Hey, Mr. Commissioner, that's ANOTHER reason to dump the DH. How many do you need?
Get rid of the game-distorting rule, expand rosters to 26, and you've given the Players Association 16 more jobs than they have now. Even Donald Fehr, with nothing to fehr but his own name, would have to shut up for a change.

The winter moves thus far show clearly that baseball needs to realign -- putting the New York, L.A., and Chicago clubs in one league, perhaps with Boston as well, and all the have-nots in another. Otherwise, the competition is grossly unfair.

And, by the way -- here's another job for this do-nothing commissioner: nullify the Dodger signing of Rafael Furcal, sanction the agency that arranged him to sign with Atlanta and then pulled the plug, and return him to the open market, with the caveat that he CAN'T sign with Los Angeles. There's precedent for that move too: ask Tom Seaver, originally signed by the Braves before he was eligible and then thrown into the hat for open bidding (with the Braves banned from participating).

For a commissioner who claims he knows history, we've seen precious little proof from Bud Lite.