MLB: An Open Letter to Commissioner Selig

Dear Commissioner Selig,

I became a baseball fan in 1985 as an admirer of Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs. Growing up in Oregon without a local team, I adopted the Red Sox as my favorite team, and was of course disappointed by that infamous Game 6.

By fortunate circumstance, I attended college in Boston, and my attraction to the Red Sox grew and deepened by experiencing so many games at storied Fenway Park. Although I have now moved from Boston, I still love the Sox and, of course, now consider myself part of the eighty-year legacy of disappointment and despair that is Red Sox Nation. Which, I think, becomes Bostonians well.

For generations, Red Sox fans have coped and suffered valiantly.

The real reason I am writing was spurred this morning by the news that Mike Mussina has agreed to sign with the New York Yankees. Certainly because the Red Sox had joined the fray to attract Mussina, it may seem that what I have to say in this letter is motivated by the age-old partisanship of the New York – Boston rivalry.

I admit, losing the bidding war to NY is tough to take, but I’m writing this letter not so much as a Red Sox fan, but as a baseball fan. As a fan who enjoys days at the ballpark cheering for the home team, and all that has made summer and baseball an American tradition. And as a fan who, like you, believes that the health of the game depends on competitive balance so that all of baseball’s fans will enjoy the game.

That is why I am troubled with the current state of the game, as I know you and many others are. My personal realization that the Mussina situation is not just one born of sour grapes served, once again, by the Yankees comes from the fact that the futility Red Sox Nation feels is being felt in Major League cities across the country. The polarization of wealth in baseball has created a situation in which the outcome of the next season is, to many fans, already decided and utterly predictable.

That there is no room for even the slightest amount of pre-season optimism in Beantown is a true shame. Every year, Red Sox fans invite upon themselves the folly of hoping against fate that "maybe this is the year." It has become a springtime ritual that has enriched baseball lore, giving life to the greatest superstition in sports history, "The Curse of the Bambino."

The complete loss of any hope for Boston, and other teams, to compete with mega-market superpowers like New York will destroy this and other legacies that are such an integral part of baseball’s allure. Who will believe in The Curse when it is so obvious that the real reason the Sox fail is because of the corrupting influence of a predictable outcome, built on the foundation of media dollars?

Now, months before the season starts, the specter of an inevitable Yankee championship already hovers not only over Red Sox Nation, but all of baseball.

For there is no longer a regular season in the American League, but only a 162-game tune-up for the defending champs, a six-month prelude to another coronation. That is not sport or athletic contest, and I fear the consequences for baseball. I sincerely hope that baseball does not rot of fan apathy, if every team is a no-name member of the supporting cast in the New York Yankee Show.

Please Commissioner Selig, save the game from this fate.