It’s Rob Manfred Day, also referred to as Lockout Day in some faith traditions. It’s the day we all come together to appreciate our fearless commissioner, the man who will save us, pitiful baseball fans we are, from the wantonly destructive desires of our favorite players. Bakeries are selling out of Rob Manfred Day cakes. Rob Manfred Day cards are clogging the arteries of the Postal Service. It’s a bank holiday, of course, but some are open for Rob Manfred Day worship services, in which we worship money by lighting it on fire and throwing it from the rooftops onto the vast, endless parking lots of Arlington, Texas.
Like the little drummer boy from the song, “The Little Drummer Boy,” we weren’t sure what to give Rob Manfred in honor of this occasion. Having no drum, we decided on this: an incomplete list of his finest accomplishments as MLB commissioner. We hope he likes it. We think he won’t. We think he doesn’t like anything. We legitimately think Rob Manfred hates everything on this planet.
Rob Manfred Lost Control of His Balls
Remember the balls? Under Rob Manfred, home runs boomed, with reporters, physicists, and those guys with a weird obsession with foul balls that takes all the fun out of catching them quickly teaming up to find physical changes in the balls’ construction had resulted in longer flight. Was Manfred trying to boost excitement within the game? Maybe. But we must take him at his word, and he said that this was entirely unintentional. The game was significantly altered by shifts in the production of its namesake sphere, and the commissioner didn’t know how it happened. Similarly, he doesn’t have a great explanation for how, after announcing a new ball this past season, MLB let a bunch of old balls get mixed in.
Rob Manfred Unnecessarily Shortened the 2020 Season
Remember that 60-game season? Remember how late it started? Remember how it didn’t have to start that late, but Rob Manfred had led the owners to an agreement with the players dictating that salaries would be prorated over whatever season was eventually played, then tried to renege on that agreement once it started to become clear how and when a season could and would happen? With a leader whose primary goal was the health of the sport, baseball—an outdoor game, played in stadiums with plenty of space for distancing—would have likely begun in June. But the health of the sport isn’t the primary goal for Rob, friends and loved ones. We aren’t sure what the primary goal is, but baseball is not it.
Rob Manfred Lobbied Congress to Let His Bosses Not Follow the Rule of Law
Lobbying, recently called state-sanctioned bribery elsewhere on this website, is a talent of Rob’s, who helped MLB owners, already blessed by the divine right of kings with an antitrust exemption, push legislation through the House and Senate a few years ago making minor leaguers not subject to minimum wage law. The future stars of the sport? Guys grinding it out chasing a dream? We need to pay them less, Rob said, and Rob was right.
Rob Manfred Fined the Astros Five Million Dollars
I’ll admit. I forgot about this piece of the punishment for the trash bangers. The boldest piece! Rob Manfred looked at the Houston Astros’ brazen, embarrassing sign-stealing operation and said, “That will cost you five million dollars,” and then the Astros presumably did the thing you do where you hurriedly get up and leave the room when you realize the person doling out punishment presumably forgot to tell you all of it.
Math teacher Rob Manfred: So, for cheating on the test, we’re going to dock you ten points on it.
*pause*
You, who peed all over another student’s backpack while copying their test pencil-stroke by pencil-stroke: *Gets up and runs the hell out.*
Rob Manfred Got Us All to Talk About How Slow Baseball Is
When you think of baseball, do you think, “Wow, that is a slow game,” before you think of anything else? If so, you have possibly been listening to Rob Manfred, who loves to talk about how slow baseball is, how it’s an existential problem how slow baseball is, and how somebody around here, maybe someone who’s in charge, better figure out how to make baseball less slow. Thanks, Rob.
Rob Manfred Called Mike Trout Boring
Mike Trout, one of the greatest athletes on this small, rocky planet, is not exciting enough for Rob Manfred. And you know Rob Manfred’s exciting. Because he lost control of his balls once (twice or more).
Rob Manfred Shielded the Owners Through His Own Sensational Unlikability and Gross Incompetence
First of all, yes, we’ll get to the players, there is a role by them in this problem, I think Joe’s covering that. Secondly, one of the most impressive things about Manfred is his ability to take a group of billionaires who repeatedly lie to us (MLB franchises have grown in value by magnitudes while owners tell us they aren’t making money) and make us completely forget about them. What a gravitational pull this man exercises on the forces of rage. A media magnet. Mike Trout should take notes.
