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July 14, 2004
Bud: I solemnly swear...
In an mlb.com online chat today, MLB strongman Bud Selig promised: "We are going to make a decision this summer. The Expos will have a new home and a new owner from the 2005 baseball season." And surely Bud would never lie to us.
Among the other highlights from Bud's chat, conducted in his patented patois very similar to English:
"The idea of contraction came from the owners, all 30 of them. I know as the Commissioner, I took a pretty good flogging, particularly up in Minnesota, but the fact of the matter is, that the thing that set off contraction was revenue sharing, the very subject a lot of people have talked about, because if you're a big market club sending money to a team, you have the right to ask what are their revenues, how much are we sending them in revenue sharing, and what are they doing about it?
"Minneapolis is a wonderful market, Major League market in every way. They need a new ballpark. The Twins say they need a new ballpark, the Vikings say they need a new ballpark; they have just got to address that problem. It's a marvelous market and the Twins have done a great job. But the Twins themselves are the leading advocate for a new ballpark there, and I hope they are going to be successful."
Selig also told baseball writers in a separate interview that he may want to stay on as commissioner beyond the end of his term in 2006. No, that sound you heard wasn't thunder, just Doug Pappas screaming in the afterlife.