Mark Cuban rips Bud Selig over Alex Rodriguez, HGH and buying the Texas Rangers (Video)
By Mike Dyce
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and was asked about Major League Baseball’s suspension of Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod was suspended by Major League Baseball roughly 211 games, or through the end of the 2014 season.
Whenever Mark Cuban speaks though, you know he isn’t on the fence about anything, he has his opinion and he defends it.
It starts with Leno asking if the suspension is fair or unfair.
“Horrible,” Cuban says. “I think it’s disgraceful what Major League Baseball is trying to do to him. It’s not that he doesn’t deserve to be suspended, he does, but they have policies in place: first time offender, 50 games, second time offender, 100 games. 214 games? That is personal.”
It wasn’t a secret really that MLB was looking to make an example out of A-Rod. Cuban though relays his own personal experiences with trying to buy a team to further explain how commissioner Bud Selig runs baseball.
“My experience is, with Major League Baseball, and after this there is no chance I’m going to be able to buy a team, it has basically become Bud Selig’s mafia,” Cuban explained. “He runs it the way he wants to run it. They don’t want me to own the team. When I was trying to buy the Rangers, even after the Cubs, the Cubs didn’t even come. When I was trying to buy the Texas Rangers it was an open auction. And I sat in there with my good, hard-earned money trying to bid and they did everything possible to keep me from buying the team.”
“They had lawyers in there trying to change the rules. They had people trying to put up more money. I mean, it was horrible.”
“For him to come out and attack A-Rod the way he did and just do totally something outside the rules?”
Jay Leno then asks why Selig doesn’t want Cuban to own a team.
“Why not you? You seem like a nice enough fella, you got the money to buy, what did they use as an excuse?”
“It’s not like he called me and said you’re a jerk,” Cuban said.
He explained that how he runs the Mavericks is by considering what is best for the team, the fans and for the league even if it means disagreeing with the commissioner from time to time. Cuban says that Selig doesn’t want to be challenged.
Cuban also says that HGH hasn’t been proven as a benefit to baseball of basketball players.