John Fisher is the de facto commissioner of MLB. He stepped into this role when Rob Manfred abandoned the duties of the office. The commissioner is charged with looking out for the good of the game. Instead of taking that responsibility seriously, Manfred has become the blackhole of baseball morality. His dereliction of duty has allowed Fisher to step into the breach.
Why is Manfred working in lockstep with Fisher, who has only his own narrow interest in mind? Are Manfred and Fisher one and the same? Has anyone seen them in a room at the same time? More than likely, they are different people—and Fisher is simply the happy beneficiary of Manfred’s inability to cut the umbilical cord to Bud Selig.
Manfred is incapable of independent thought. He and Selig are part of the same human continuum—a single mind with two bodies and counting. You can bet there’s already a successor stooge in the works, biding his time for the day Manfred turns in his horns. Who is Manfred’s understudy, by the way? It doesn’t really matter. We know he is of the same mind as his predecessors and only too happy to attach to the Selig-Manfred centipede of unbridled greed.
Fisher’s ascension to the role of commissioner is one of the great passive heists in the history of the world. Not only was the coup bloodless, it was damn near pulseless. Fisher didn’t do anything other than lounge around and let his franchise run into the ground. That was enough. Not a single owner stood up to Fisher, and in the end, he was the only man left standing. The silence of his peers is the lifeblood of his tyranny. MLB owners are bending over backwards to appease the man who they’ve been subsidizing for years. Kudos to Fisher. In one of the great feats of lethargy ever, he has become the alpha dog in ownership circles.
It’s not too late for the owners. The shovels haven’t gone into the ground yet. Please, someone switch on the distress signal. Get Tony Robbins in a room with these roly-poly, saggy-spirited men; let them know they’re worth something. They owe it to themselves to be more than Fisher’s attendants. If they don’t stand up to Fisher, they will reveal themselves as one of the biggest collections of low-testosterone men assembled at any time and place in history. The jury is still out. Hopefully, they will right the ship and safeguard baseball’s place as America’s pastime.