Northern California Baseball Blog and Q&A

Paul Gutierrez
Raised in Barstow, Calif., where he played community college baseball for two years, Paul Gutierrez has worked at Sports Illustrated and the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where he covered his alma mater's Runnin' Rebels at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. During a six-year stint at the Los Angeles Times, he co-authored Tommy Davis' "Tales from the Dodgers Dugout." He came to The Bee in October 2005 and is now a Bay Area sports features writer who concentrates on baseball during the spring and summer.

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July 12, 2007

More on the commissioner

Wednesday's critical "On Baseball" column on tap-dancing-yet-prat-falling Commissioner Bud Selig, who has yet to make a decision on whether he will be in attendance when Barry Bonds breaks the all-time home run record - he is within five homers at the All-Star break - drew negative responses from readers...towards the Commish.

But Bonds was not the only subject that came up during an hour-long Q&A with Selig during a luncheon with members of the Baseball Writers Association of America at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco's Union Square.

Selig also ruminated on several other topics.

With the World Series now pushed to November, Selig said he likes the idea of moving the regular season back to 154 games from its current 162-game slate.

"I like change," he said, "but I'm also at heart a traditionalist."

Selig said when he was owner of the Milwaukee Brewers he tried to get the other owners to reduce the schedule.

"I was voted down, 29-1," he said, despite there not being 30 teams in MLB at the time. "I couldn't even get a 'second' (on the motion)."

Selig also wants to keep the opening round of divisional playoffs at their current best-three-of-five formats.

And on teams that are out of the running down the stretch resting their stars, Selig took umbrage.

"This is not the theory of relativity," he said. "This is easy. You play your best players."

Of course, Selig was asked if he thought baseball's drug-testing policy was working.

"Do I have frustrations on Human Growth Hormone? Yes," he said. "There is no test for it. The landscape changes every day because of chemists."

Some might say, so too do Selig's feelings on Bonds. But Selig's non-committal to attending speaks volumes of his disdain for the impending HR King.

-Paul Gutierrez

Posted by Bill Bradley, July 12, 2007 03:11 PM

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