It is ludicrous that Bud Selig would find himself about to invoke XII.B against anyone. In the 1980s, as owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and a labor hawk, Selig faithfully executed MLB's plan of colluding to fix the market for baseball players. With his fellow owners under then-commissioner Peter Ueberroth, Selig agreed to not compete for talent, to not look to improve his team, in violation of federal labor law. In the winter prior to the 1987 season, Selig's Brewers declined to pursue stars such as Tim Raines, Jack Morris and Ron Guidry. A team that finished second in the AL in runs scored came up seven games short in the AL East by also finishing tenth in runs allowed, using 12 different starting pitchers including Len Barker (5.36 ERA), Chris Bosio (5.24), Mark Knudson (5.37) and Mike Birkbeck (6.20). By putting self-serving violations of antitrust law ahead of the good of the Brewers, Selig may have cost his team a division title while spearheading an approach that would end up costing MLB owners $280 million across three separate judgments and queering relations with the MLBPA for the next two decades.
Seven years later, Selig would make the costs of collusion look like ashtray money. After participating in the ouster of commissioner Fay Vincent in 1992, Selig became the de facto commissioner in advance of the negotiations for a Collective Bargaining Agreement in 1994. As the head of the Executive Council, Selig pushed a hardline approach that included a payroll cap, the ending of salary arbitration and the gutting of free agency. The walkout forced by this approach would cost the game more than a half-billion in direct lost revenue in 1994, and more than a billion dollars in total when 1995 and slack revenues in post-strike seasons are tallied. The strike ended when the National Labor Relations Board agreed to seek an injunction against the owners for unfair labor practices, and future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor not only
granted the injunction, she ruled that the owners would have to come to her to get permission to declare an impasse in the future.
As an owner, as a member of the Player Relations Committee, as head of the Executive Council, as acting commissioner, Bud Selig has done more to violate XII.B than Alex Rodriguez, as a player, ever could. Over a period of ten years, Selig executed strategies that cost the industry more than $1.2 billion, that violated antitrust and labor law, that destroyed any working relationship with the MLBPA and that damaged baseball's standing with American sports fans.
