MLB Commissioner Bud Selig expresses his regrets to the Astros for the unscheduled road trip to Milwaukee last week.
The players, manager Cecil Cooper and some officials in the Houston area have faulted Selig over the move, saying it was unfair to a team in the race for the National League wild card.
“I recognized the advantage the Cubs would have in playing in such close proximity to Chicago, and had there been a better option, I would have taken it,” Selig wrote in [an ad in the Chron] on page C16 of the Sports section.
“All of us involved in the decision regret the frustration the Astros and their fans felt about playing two games in Milwaukee.”
Selig said roofed ballparks in Minneapolis, Phoenix and St. Petersburg, Fla., were not available.
“We did not think it was fair to play games on the West Coast” with the Astros heading to Miami to face the Marlins, the commissioner said.
Selig wrote that he has heard the complaints of Astros fans.
“While it is insignificant in comparison to the havoc that was taking place in southeast Texas, the storm also created a scheduling difficulty for Major League Baseball. … As commissioner, my job is to balance many competing needs, while also finishing the season on time,” Selig wrote.
I’m certainly no Selig fan, but I sympathize here. Unless you were willing to consider minor league or college stadia, I don’t really know what else you could have done. At least Milwaukee was in the same time zone. Yeah, it wasn’t so much a “home game”, but where outside the hurricane zone would there have been a critical mass of Astros fans? I think Lance Berkman has it right:
“You can only use that as an excuse for so long why we are where we are,” Berkman said. “We went up there, and there’s 90 feet between the bases up there (at Miller Park) just like there was at home. There was a hostile crowd, but we won three games from the Cubs at Wrigley, so it’s no excuse.”
What’s done is done. I see no point in fixating on it.
Eh, I think Selig deserves a big ole raspberry for this. I understand that he doesn’t want to upset the TV schedule but what about the integrity fo the game. Isn’t that worth telling TBS hey, you’re going to need to schedule another couple of nights of Tyler Perry’s House of Payne and some Friends reruns…just as if the opening games of the playoffs were rained out for 2 nights in a row and let Houston play at home against the Cubs.
The other point that hasn’t been brought up is that the Cubs are a big draw and lead the NL Central. Selig clearly didn’t want to be put in the position of having to tell the Cubs you’re going to have to play 3 games in 2 days while every other team can rest and set up their rotation.