The Wimpy Major League Baseball Commissioner

Malor League Commisioner Rob Manfred

Major League Baseball risked having several top players boycott the All-Star Game had it not been moved from Atlanta, reports Yahoo Sports.

The July 13 game between National and American league superstars was moved out of Atlanta on the order of Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred after Georgia changed its election laws.

What a wimp.

Harold Reynolds, who was only a two-time All-Star player and is now working as a television commentator, said MLB risked having players refuse to play had the game been staged in Atlanta in the wake of the voting law changes.

"Players were not going to play," he said. "That's part of taking a stand for social justice. And I'm not just talking about black players in The Players Alliance." 

As if players have any special understanding about Georgia elections and election law. And just what does baseball have to do with election laws anyway?

And what about social justice? Do baseball players really want to debate a Hayekian on the concept of social justice?

Nobel prize winner Friedrich Hayek on the concept from an interview with James Buchanan:

It's undefinable. People don't know what they mean when they talk about social justice. They have particular situations in mind, and they hope that if they demand social justice, somebody would care for all people who are in need, or something of that kind. But the phrase "social justice" has no meaning, because no two people can agree on what it really means. I believe, as I say in the preface [to Law, Legislation and Liberty], I'd written quite a different chapter on the subject trying that [concept] in practice in one particular case after another, until I discovered that the phrase had no meaning. 

The appeal to the word justice was just because it was a very effective and appealing word; but justice is essentially an attribute of individual human action, and a state of affairs as such cannot be just or unjust. So it's in the last resort a logical muddle. It's not that I'm against it, but I say that it has no meaning.

All Manfred did by announcing the game would not be played is bow to the confused cultural-Marxist pressure of some players. At the same time, it upset a good deal of fans (See: Ending My Relationship With Major League Baseball ) who wanted to watch a baseball game that had nothing to do with influence from a bunch of players who spout some high philosophical concepts they don't understand.

Why would Manfred bow to such nonsense?

As I have explained before, these problems with players are easy to solve. 

The one person all players listen to is their agents. And there is no one more interested in green than sports agents.

I would just call in the agents who represent trouble players and have a really subtle but clear conversation in which I would tell those agents, after making sure nothing is recorded, that they better shut down the political posturing, that baseball is about entertaining fans not about promoting particular political positions, and then I would even more subtly and clearly let it be known that any agent that is not able to control his players will face the most impossible conditions ever when trying to get a raise for any of his players.

And then I would tell them to get the hell out of the room.

Problem solved. 

If you can't deal with a bunch of pampered players who are posturing in support of absurdities but at the same time you are funding them to the tune of multi-millions of dollars, then you are the problem.

The owners should fire Manfred.

-RW