Mark Madden: Messy negotiations prove Major League Baseball needs independent commissioner

A week ago, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said he was “100 percent” certain there would be a 2020 baseball season.

As of Monday, though, Manfred was “not confident.”

Tuesday’s face-to-face meeting with union boss Tony Clark restored optimism games will be played.

What happened inside of a week?

Nothing resembling independent thought by Manfred, that’s certain.

Manfred, like the commissioners of America’s other major sports leagues, isn’t a leader or even really a commissioner.

Manfred is an errand boy for the owners. They think. He talks. You can’t even see the owners’ lips move. That’s how Manfred spews pus like “the owners are 100 percent committed to getting baseball back on the field” while keeping a straight face.

At best, Manfred is a middleman. He might pretend to look out for baseball, but can’t. That’s evidenced by his impotence in MLB’s health crisis turned labor dispute. 

What baseball (and every sport) needs is an independent commissioner with absolute jurisdiction to do what’s best for the game. His pay and expenses could be split 50/50 between owners and players. Give him a long-term deal: 10 years, maybe more.

Sounds impossible, right? Dumb at the very least.

But baseball went in that direction at an even more desperate time.

In 1920, after the Chicago White Sox had fixed the World Series the prior year, MLB hired its first commissioner: Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Landis, a U.S. federal judge, was given full power by the owners to act in baseball’s best interest. He banned eight “Black Sox” players for life and mostly erased gambling’s influence on the sport.

Landis didn’t just control the players. He controlled the owners, too.

Babe Ruth’s emerging superstardom was a bigger factor, but Landis helped resurrect baseball after the scandal in ’19. (Landis wasn’t perfect: He was part of the conspiracy to keep African-American players out of organized baseball. Landis died while still commissioner in 1944. Jackie Robinson broke MLB’s color line in 1947.)

Things aren’t simple like they were in 1920. There was no players’ union. No collective bargaining. No free agency. Players got treated like serfs. It’s difficult to imagine owners or players granting such trust and influence to a third party.

But that’s why MLB is in its current mess. The owners just fling insulting proposals at the players. The players respond in kind. It’s like monkeys with feces. Manfred’s meeting with Clark on Tuesday was said to be “productive,” not excrement-smeared. (I hope they wore masks.)

A latter-day Landis would know what to do. He’d have to be better than the empty suit that is Manfred.

But if the owners and players can’t agree on how to not embarrass MLB coming out of a pandemic, how could they ever agree on a commissioner?

My choice is former ESPN talking head Keith Olbermann. He’s smart, honest, courageous, autonomous and truly loves baseball. The last MLB commissioner who fit that description was Bart Giamatti. He was also MLB’s last good commissioner.

Olbermann doesn’t suffer fools gladly. The commissioner’s job requires that, now more than ever.

But the idea is pure fantasy.

MLB doesn’t want fixed. It’s the plaything of rich men, at least eight of whom want to ignore baseball’s continuity, credibility and history and shut the season down because, for the first time in decades, the endeavor would lose money. They want it all, they want it every year and even a pandemic provides no excuse.

The question isn’t whether an independent commissioner could save baseball. The question is whether baseball is worth saving.

Baseball’s audience is finding alternatives as we speak. The CBA expires in 2021. Perhaps we’re looking at several lost seasons and a dystopian future for baseball as previewed in the final season of “Brockmire.”

No big deal. PNC Park could easily be converted for Major League Soccer. Pittsburghers still could have a fun night at the ballpark. The ball would be in play a lot more, too.