Bud Selig Does the Impossible and Redeems Self

Those of you who follow the baseballs probably heard that Bud Selig has signed on to remain as Commissioner of MLB until 2012. The news elicited the usual series of groans and curses from yours truly, although a piece over at Slate covers it from an unusually cheery angle:

Bush just lost the job he has always wanted much more than the one he's in.

Hah!!! Yeah, that hadn't occurred to me, but it is frickin' hilarious. The scuttlebutt about Dubya since before he was Preznit has always been that his chief ambition in life was to be Commissioner of Baseball.

I didn't realize, though, just how far back that ambition went. Apparently it was a lifelong thing. Which raises the question, What kind of fucking nerdlinger has the childhood ambition of being Commissioner of Baseball? Sheesh. I mean, I gave up on the idea of playing baseball very early in life, but then I started fantasizing about being a broadcaster. Fantasizing about being the asswipe in charge of the front office bullshit? Jesus, he should have been wedgied for eternity for that.

There are other problems with Dubya's dream. For instance, there will never be a commissioner named "George." They all have goofy first names:

• Kenesaw Mountain Landis
• Happy Chandler
• Ford Frick
• Bowie Kuhn
• Fay Vincent
• Bud Selig

OK, there are a few normal names in the bunch, a "William," a "Peter," and a "Bart," but mostly you gotta be a freakishly named eejit to be commissioner of baseball.

One of Bush's close childhood friends, Doug Hannah, told Vanity Fair's Gail Sheehy ... in 2000: "He wanted to be Kenesaw Mountain Landis,” America's first baseball commissioner, legendary for his power and dictatorial style.

Yeah ... Judge Landis ... there's a hero for every red-blooded boy in America. A tyrannical, egomaniacal, racist fuckhead. If you're not familiar with the story of Judge Landis, here's a well-worn factoid (this iteration of it from Wikipedia):

Club owner Bill Veeck claimed Landis prevented him from purchasing the Phillies when Landis learned of Veeck's plan to integrate the team.

Sounds like Gee Dub to me.

I'm not sure I have ever seen a Commissioner I liked. I'm not an appreciator of authority figures in general. I gotta say, though, that my admiration for the fish-lipped, corrupt, charisma-less mummy, Bud Selig, has just risen above zero for the first time.