LARNED — Tuesday evening, with the flat-screen TV tuned to the irrelevancy of the Major League Baseball All-Star game, the left side of my brain was screaming, “Shouldn’t we be watching something else? How about Storage Wars or Gator Guys or even the Kardashians?”
At the mere mention of the Kardashians, the right side of my brain slowly emerged from its numbness and weighed in that even an All-Star baseball game was better than the Kardashians.
While this battle for the remote was going on, what was left of my brain centered on a strange thought: Bud Selig has been good for baseball. Now before you conk me over the head with the remote and go back to Gator Guys, consider a few things about Selig, the current Commissioner of MLB. When he was appointed to serve as acting commissioner in 1992, there were howls of protests from the media and even other baseball professionals.  He was considered to be a lackey for the owners and in fact, even the owners weren’t particularly pleased with Selig, he having been a compromise choice.
Selig oversaw baseball through the 1994 strike, the introduction of the wild card, interleague play and the merging of the National and American Leagues under the Office of the Commissioner. He is credited for the financial turnaround of baseball during his tenure and introduced revenue sharing.
The problems with steroids and other performance enhancing drugs have been a problem during his tenure, but there is enough blame to go around for players, agents, club officials and the players union to have a little left over for Selig. Give the man credit for trying. He has instituted many rule changes and penalties to that end. Baseball is on the threshold of announcing a lot of new suspensions and penalties for a lot of players, some of them the biggest stars.
Selig will retire at the end of the 2014 season. His 22 years as commissioner just might go down as the best tenure in all of baseball.
Now if he would only do something about that silly Home Run Derby and the whole All-Star game. Quick now. Who was the winning pitcher Tuesday night? See, you weren’t paying attention either. You weren’t watching Honey Boo Boo, were you?

Chalk Talk — Notre Dame is not the only school that Ohio State is tossing rotten apples at. This week, Florida football coach Will Muschamp said that Ohio State reported the Gators for possible violations to the NCAA, though none were found. I loved Muschamp’s comeback: “We so appreciated our friends from Ohio State making sure we’re compliant with the NCAA rules. They certainly know a little bit about that subject.” ... Johnny Football (Manziel) might be more appropriately named Johnny Trouble. Since winning the Heisman Trophy last year, he has bounced from one embarrassing misdeed to another.  ... I got a kick out of rumors out of the NBA that former Jayhawk Thomas Robinson didn’t play very much last year because “he can’t remember the plays.” Since when does anyone in the NBA run a play? Get it across halfcourt, give the ball to your star and everyone get out of the way and watch. That’s the only play I see run in the NBA! … Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright, until you hear them speak!

Charles Tabler is a contributing writer from Larned.