An Open Letter To Bud Selig

September 3, 2005

The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball
Allan H. (Bud) Selig, Commissioner
245 Park Avenue, 31st Floor
New York, NY 10167

Dear Mr. Selig,

I write to you today as a baseball fan and an American citizen. In the aftermath of the attacks on our country on September 11, 2001, as commissioner of baseball you made a difficult and important decision. You shut down the game. No baseball was played for five full days. You stopped the game out of respect for the dead, to give the country a period of mourning. It didn't seem appropriate to play a game in the face of such tragedy. You called your friend, President Bush, and told him that baseball would do whatever he wanted and you would follow his lead. Whatever he needed, you would do. Shea Stadium in Queens was used as a staging ground for relief efforts at the World Trade Center, and many players, managers, coaches, and baseball employees were involved in aiding those efforts. At the time you made remarks about how there are things in the world more important than playing a baseball game, and that the country had more pressing things to focus on at that time. It was, in many people's opinion, a shining moment for America's Pastime.

I have watched my television, in horror and sadness, for the past six days as the city of New Orleans sits underwater and tens of thousands of survivors struggle to survive. Many of them have already lost that battle and many more will in the coming hours and days. The situation is so dire that there is still no way of knowing how many lives have been lost. Many officials have publicly expressed that they expect the number of dead to exceed 10,000, over three times the number that perished in Manhattan on that horrible day four years ago.

My question to you is a simple one. Where is Baseball now? Have you called your friend Mr. Bush and made the same offer as you did in 2001? Have you even considered that it might be in bad taste to continue to play the game while still in the middle of the largest disaster to hit our country? Have you called the governor of Texas and offered Minute Maid Park, a retractable roof stadium in Houston, as another shelter to place refugees from Louisiana. Last night, as many people sat in the parking lot of the now full Astrodome waiting for rides to other shelters in the state, baseball fans were cheering an Astros victory over the Athletics just a couple of miles away. The sheer number of refugees coming out of New Orleans has created a shelter problem America has not seen in its history, which is why sports stadiums are being used. Major League Baseball has several domed or retractable-roof stadiums all around the country, including one in your home town of Milwaukee. Have you made any offer to stop playing the game and allow, or even order, the use of these sites as refugee shelters? If not, why? I know that none of the citizens in the Gulf region of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are season ticket holders like many of the people who perished in New York. But is there no place in your heart that will consider helping them? The million dollars MLB donated to the relief effort I'm sure is appreciated by the Red Cross and is a good PR move for you, but have you given any thought at all to finding out if there is more you can do? Is there any thought in your mind about the effect of this tragedy beyond the impact it might have on playoff ratings or the cost of jet fuel for the team charters? When this tragedy hit, was your first thought "Those poor people," or was it "Thank God we don't have a team in New Orleans, that would have been a major headache"?

I can understand, since you are widely considered to be the biggest failure to ever hold the title, that you are no longer concerned with your legacy as Commissioner of Major League Baseball. But what about your legacy as a human being and an American?

Yours sincerely,

Out Of Tune
Boston, MA