Arguably no one since the steroid users of the 1990s and 2000s has done more to ruin the MLB than current commissioner Rob Manfred, who announced Thursday that he will retire from his post in 2029.
Manfred, who gets booed by fans every time he makes a public appearance, has held the top job in the league since 2015. His reign of terror was extended last year to last until the end of the decade by the owners of the MLB before it will meet a merciful end.
“You can only have so much fun in one lifetime,” Manfred said Thursday, according to ESPN. “I have been open with [owners] about the fact that this is going to be my last term.”
If by “fun,” Manfred means using his job to ruin professional baseball, the next five years promise to be filled with horrors for baseball fans, just as the last nine have been — especially for the city of Oakland.
With the date of the end of Manfred’s tenure at least now known, it’s worth recapping the many ways that this nefarious villain has shown utter contempt for the game of baseball, its fans, and its players.
To begin with, Manfred has completely disregarded the fans of the Oakland Athletics in a naked effort to get an MLB team to move to Las Vegas. Despite the willingness of the city to work with the team to build a new stadium, the team signed a deal to build a stadium in Las Vegas. As consolation, Manfred said Oakland fans can root for the San Francisco Giants.
Regarding TV rights, Manfred has fought militantly to effectively lock out local fans from watching their team if they subscribe to the expensive MLBTV package, which allows fans to watch any team except the one in their local media. The effect is fans can’t watch their local home team on the program and must pay to find a cable package that provides their local regional sports network.
Manfred also dipped his fingers in politics by stripping Atlanta of the 2021 All-Star Game because Georgia’s state government dared to offend Democrats by passing a new election security law. Of course, as a man of zero principles, Manfred and MLB awarded the 2025 game to the city despite the fact that the law the league decried as “Jim Crow 2.0” is still on the books.
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And when it comes to the on-the-field product, Manfred has shown a blatant disregard for the sport’s traditions by pushing for arbitrary rule changes that have completely changed the tenor of the game. From the universal designated hitter rule, silly timeout rules for batters, and affecting the ability of the pitcher to throw out runners on the bases, the commissioner’s experiments have wreaked havoc on the game that was once universally loved as America’s national pastime.
The Manfred reign of terror cannot end soon enough.