Talkin' Baseball Boring guy delivers boring speech about boring statue

This past Tuesday was marked by a special event at Miller Park: the gala unveiling of a new statue honoring Milwaukee native, former Brewers owner, and current MLB commissioner Allan H. “Bud” Selig. A controversial figure in the world of baseball, Selig has also meant a great deal to the city of Milwaukee and was almost single-handedly responsible for bringing the great game back…ugh! All right, already! It’s cool for him and everything, but it’s a boring statue modeled after a boring man. There has to be something more interesting going on than all the bitching about Selig’s decimation of the game. In fact, The A.V. Club will go point by point on the whole statue ceremony and prove it.

The statue: Bud Selig has done some great things during his time as commissioner, including introducing the wild card (which was especially nice in 2008) and only canceling one World Series, all while wearing a tie. Hence, there he is, wearing a tie and standing there—cast in a metal that screams "third place." Probably a fairly accurate description of what goes on in the front office, but not terribly emblematic of the game itself. Actually, there is a lot of standing around in baseball, but at least the players don’t look like actuaries while doing so.

More interesting: The baseball lodged in the Miller Park scoreboard. That thing is up there. Rock and Anderson might have called attention to it after Matt Kemp’s freakish homer banged off of the scoreboard, but screw that: This article suggested newbie Chris Dickerson did it during batting practice, which Milwaukee fans are surely more inclined to believe. Either way, bronzing that chunk of scoreboard and propping up outside the gates would probably look cooler than a statue of a guy in a suit.

Selig’s face: Looking mighty droopy nowadays, the commissioner’s face has undoubtedly aged rapidly during the 18 years he’s been running the sport, including sweating through the aftermath of the steroid era. But for a man who had the nuts to make the All-Star Game actually count for something (maybe too much), a distinguished face seems just out of reach. Maybe an eyepatch or a gnarly scar would distract from the fact his neck is too shriveled to fill a dress-shirt collar any more.

More interesting: The Captain Morgan’s awards, for which Brewers rookie reliever John Axford earned a nomination for Captain Scruff. Captain may be a nauseating varnish substitute and odds are that Jayson Werth’s unbridled beard will take the cake, but that can’t diminish our excitement over the Ax Man being recognized for his willingness to carry on the Brewers history of hirsuteness. If only Selig would tear a page out of Axford’s book and slap a surly goatee on that plain old mug of his.

Selig’s speech: Delivering a yawn-athon that dragged out for 15 minutes, Selig drably knocked back metaphors and quotes from totally non-baseball people like George Bernard Shaw and Eleanor Roosevelt, like a tailgating troll slamming cold ones. The soggy oratory did pump his beloved Milwaukee though, and he did manage to mention the introduction of interleague play and baseball’s huge revenue boost under his tenure. But he also found time to quote the late President Woodrow Wilson during an ultimate snoozefest that threatened to bore Jackie Robinson’s wife to death.

More interesting: Selig’s slightly less scripted moments added a more human touch to the face of baseball, that so many fans would love to punch. During his post-ceremony press conference, he got all emotional—or at least acknowledged the possibility of getting emotional—while reflecting on his childhood in Milwaukee and all the pals who showed up for his statue ceremony, and then the living epitome of baseball greatness, Hank Aaron, paid him a compliment. It’s true that putting up a Bud Selig statue at just about any other ballpark in the nation would probably result in multiple, heinous acts of vandalism, but having his likeness outside Miller Park isn’t so bad, even if it’s kind of lame.