Rob Manfred Is Your Next MLB Commissioner

After some confusion and sidetalks between Bud Selig and Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, leader of an insurrectionist element among MLB owners, baseball has its successor to Selig: Rob Manfred will take over as the next commissioner after Selig retires in January.

It took a few rounds of ballots, though, and probably some seriously shady backroom deals, for Manfred to beat Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner—a proxy for the Reinsdorf contingent—on the ballots after MLB executive vice-president of business Tim Brosnan dropped out.

Manfred was outside counsel for the league in the 1994-95 strike and came on full time in 1998, running labor relations before he got a promotion to chief operating officer last year. He's best thought of as Selig's consigliere, and will presumably continue to run league affairs in much the same way the old bastard did, though almost certainly less effectively. (He doesn't have 50 years' worth of chits with owners to call in after all.)

For baseball fans, it's the best outcome among those that had any chance of happening. The kind of quasi-collusive behavior and semi-legal anti-doping operations one can reasonably expect out of Manfred aren't good, but he's not a front man for a group that actively wants to provoke a work stoppage. Take your victories where you can get them.

Photo: AP