MLB: ESPN’s Keith Olbermann Skewers Rob Manfred and Baseball Owners
There’s a new one. Skewers. Rob Manfred is doing it to the game of baseball as he and a small group of owners continue to rob us of our Dodgers. So if Robbie’s doing it to baseball, why not return the favor to him?
On Tuesday’s edition of the Rich Eisen show, veteran journalist Keith Olbermann joined Rich to appropriately skewer Robert Manfred.
And it was gooooooooooood.
As Olbermann drops some old school baseball knowledge on us as a lead in to the show, when he starts rolling, it was poetry.
If there’s no sports played this year, what will be remembered of baseball? What will be remembered of baseball is the Astros scandal and how the owners tried to take financial advantage of a pandemic and fired their scouts and cut their minor league players and did not — in a business wehre the franchises are worth a combined 55 billion dollars could not spend the money on the people who ordinarily would work the games. And then this. Genius move.
You feeling this yet?
We’re just getting started.
One thing you have to understand is whereas everybody else in the world but about 31 guys looks at this and says ‘you really have managed to find the worst thing you could do at the worst possible moment you could do it.’ The baseball owners and Rob Manfred think they are having a tremendous success right now. … They don’t see things the way everybody else does.
It’s pretty apparent these days that there is a stark disconnect between the Rob Manfred and reality. To threaten a shortened, 50-ish game for weeks or so and then proclaim that a season might not happen because the players call your bluff and tell you ok, do it… we’re ready to play … you need to be in another stratosphere.
The union is tired of the obviously pointless negotiations, and so are the fans. Stop holding us all hostage.
Olbermann wonders aloud the way Manfred might be viewing this time in his own eyes.
But Manfred has got to be saying well, I know it looks a little bad but think of the money we’re going to be saving. We’re not going to be wasting our money on a season people aren’t going to watch maybe we won’t get to go to and think of the liability we will not have — no player or fan will sue us if they get COVID-19 at one of our games. … We’ll put out a story that we’re not going to make any money on this.
They think this is going well and when they force the strike in 1981 and when they forced the strike in 1994, they thought it was going well. … There is a disconnect between humanity and baseball owners that exceeds anything else that I’ve encountered and this includes all my political experience.
Keith Olbermann, ladies and gentlemen.
The blatant disregard for the fans and players and reality is causing irreparable damage to the game. Can’t you see this, Rob?
Podcast: Robert D. Manfred… Unequivocal Failure
