Bud Selig once again reared his ugly head of mismanaging something into the ground yet again. This time it was over $900,000.00. Here's what happened, basically last December the Boston Red Sox reluctantly agreed to play two games in Japan against the Oakland A's. Boston made sure to include a provision that not only the players get compensation but so would the coaching staff. About a week ago, Terry Francona began calling the A's about their deal to make sure it was similar. Much to his dismay, he realized that not only was Oakland getting pimped but there was a good chance Boston was as well. Two days ago, he found out that MLB had no intention of compensating the coaching staff in an absolutely disgraceful move. Keep in mind these coaches make between 80K and 175K per year so a trip to Tokyo is going to hurt their bottom line a little if they go out drinking (as I learned all too well over there) or shopping (something tells me Ginza and parts of Ikebukuro were out of the coaches' price range). As a result, Boston protested and refused to play their spring training game and threatened to not board the plane to Narita. Luckily at 12:30 MLB caved and everything was right.
However, this points to a greater issue about MLB. It's small things like this and baseball's permissive attitude toward steroids that make Bud Selig a terrible commissioner. For the compensation attitude to come to this when the commish is making 14 million per year and merchandise sales are going to be off the charts during the Japan series is pathetic. MLB should be ashamed that the Japan games nearly didn't happen due to 20 trainers/coaches not getting what they were promised.
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