Selig on Manny and All-Star Voting: Happy He 'Wasn't Confronted With That'

"Ah, the good old days!"

Manny Ramirez was suspended for 50 games earlier this season following a very hot start to the season, meaning he wasn't likely to be voted into the All-Star Game in St. Louis this year; participation in baseball is, after all, fairly important to performance.

But something odd happened as baseball began to compile votes ... Manny was winning. Yes, it was awkward. Web sites sprouted up and plenty of folks kind of half-heartedly joked about the possibility of actually getting Manny (for the record, I was wholeheartedly on board with the idea of a guy who was busted for steroids starting the All-Star Game.)

Hell, the movement, which eventually garnered Manny more than 1.7 million votes and a seventh-place finish among all NL outfielders, even inspired FanHouse's own Jay Mariotti to take fans to task for possibly putting Ramirez in the lineup.

So, when given the chance to discuss the All-Star Game with Commissioner Bud Selig, it was impossible to pass up the chance to hear his thoughts on the possibility of a recently suspended player starting the All-Star Game thanks to an underground fan movement.

"Well, I'm not sure what kind of 'underground movement' there was," Selig said during a conference call to promote FOX's coverage of the Midsummer Classic. "Once Manny was gone and gone for 50 games, the likelihood of Manny playing in this game was slim. And Joe Torre said it best -- it would not have been fair. Fortunately, we were not confronted with that and I think the fans [did an excellent job in voting for the starters]."

Now, pardon me if I come off as even a touch rude here, but, doesn't that phrase -- "Fortunately, we were not confronted with that ..." -- define the Bud Selig era. Be it rained out World Series games or ties at All-Star Games or, you know, steroids, Selig has always, always, always preferred to avoid confrontation.

And that's fine. I hate confrontation too. No one likes to deal with problems at work, but in this case, what if Manny had been elected? Would Selig have told the fans, whom baseball's done so much to already disenchant, that they were wrong for selecting a potential steroid abuser (or, if you prefer, "masking agent abuser") after PEDs were allowed to permeate the game so deeply?

He might have; or, alternately, he might have had to, since the joke would have been on baseball had Manny started in left field for the National League All-Stars. I would have been fine with that, as long as the Commissioner actually bothered to make a substantive decision one way or the other, instead of just rolling the dice and hoping he could avoid another potentially messy controversy.