From 1985-1987 he and his fellow owners were brought up on 3 counts of collusion. 1 of those counts directly affected Milwaukee Brewers legend and hall of famer Paul Molitor while Selig was owner of the Brewers, ultimately leading the owners to pay $280 million dollars of damages to the players union. When then Commissioner Fay Vincent spoke against the owners and Selig personally, Selig headed a committee of 5 owners to remove Vincent from office.

                Players union head honcho Donald Fehr has never trusted Selig since the 3 collusion convictions. Their inability to communicate with each other led to the 1994 players strike and the loss of the World Series that year. The strike also led to the demise of the Montreal Expos and led to the only time in professional sports that an entire postseason was lost.

                During his 19 years Selig has seen 50 or more home runs hit in a season 23 times. During the previous 19 years it happened twice. During his tenure there have been 60 home runs hit in a season 6 times, in the previous 119 years it’s happened twice.  12 of the top 13 home run seasons of all time have happened under his watch.

                While home runs were being hit at an alarming rate Major League Baseball also witnessed a huge increase in revenue. 1995 league wide TV revenue was $609 million in just 6 years it more than doubled to $1.3 billion. The average value for a franchise in 1994 was $111 million, the average value in 2001 jumped to $286 million. League wide attendance in 1994 was just over 50 million; in 2001 it cleared 72.5 million. Home runs were up, league owners were making more money. As shown by his actions Bud Selig has never been a true commissioner he always been a team owner first.

                On February 16^th 2009 Bud Selig told Newsday that: “I don’t want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn’t care about it, that annoys the you-know-what out of me.” Even with hard evidence and simple common knowledge showing that there was steroid abuse in his league he still puts his head in the sand. The fact is after the 1994 baseball strike the league was hurting and with steroids brought prosperity to owners, players and Selig himself. Ace Rothstein summed it up best “if you didn't know you're bein' scammed, you're too dumb to keep this job. If you did know, you were in on it." Selig has only two excuses either he was to incompetent to see the truth or he knew what was going on and chose cover his eyes and ears with handfulls of money. 

-JJ Robichaud

 http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3912702