Look at that image above. Really look at it. Now. And do not avert your eyes. Satan went to a lot of work to make this happen, and that work must be honored with your attention.
Yes, that is Rob Manfred and John Fisher, shown commemorating the upcoming 70th anniversary of the creation of The Jetsons, in Las Vegas. These two came complete with ill-fitting hard hats jammed unconvincingly onto their hydrocephalic heads, just in case lightning finally, belatedly strikes them down. They are there to celebrate the production of a sign that says a baseball field will be built on a specific site, and they are smiling to celebrate their mutual refusal to consider the evil and greed and stupidity and general imperviousness to failure that they are honoring this day. They look happy, all told.
So good for them. This photo—maybe treat yourself to another look—is only slightly more off-putting than pictures of these two doing nearly anything else, since both of them are largely known for helping reduce baseball's footprint in America. Colonizing Vegas in the way they are attempting to represent here is in no way a victory, or in no way except for their sheer obstinacy. And since that is what this picture represents, all there is to do is acknowledge that their ultimate failure and disgrace is not yet upon them, and wait a while longer for that day.
What they have accomplished so far is the destruction of one baseball market and the mockery of a second, the ongoing mockery of which repeats itself nightly through the results of the team’s denuded roster, and in a slower-burn way through Fisher selling off parts of his asset package to pay for the new stadium that will house said asset. You needn't admire Fisher to recognize that his refusal to see the sea of middle fingers raised before him is almost superhuman. He looks toward a horizon that we all still believe ends in his humiliation and sees only triumph, a glory that will only cost him everything on top of the respect he has already expended.
As for Manfred, he is simply playing the grovelling employee stooping in supplication before his least admirable superior. Which, credit where it’s due, is his actual job; he doesn’t even bother with a nod to the illusion that a sport commissioner should at least appear to serve the sport and its fans, and if there’s not much to admire in that, it is at least bracing. Manfred is clearly paying close attention to his hand in this handshake, almost certainly to keep an eye on the health and location of his fingers and any jewelry thereon, but is otherwise basking in whatever you would call this moment. Later, it would require them to pose holding shovels.
Atop all this is the objectively true notion that there are few things quite as visually nonsensical as people in business attire pretending to be construction workers by wearing the sort of protection required when some building is going on overhead—which, notably, it is not here. This is less a construction site than a sad costume party in which two old men with no discernible sense of humor or irony are dressing up while under public duress.
But for all that, one must grudgingly respect Fisher's commitment to this decades-long bit. He even said some words into a microphone, which he is generally loath to do, but none of it reached the self-parodic level of this photo. He might yet get other people to build him the stadium that he believes will be his crowning achievement, mostly by picking the one town in which large-scale construction projects do not require a relationship to either need nor desire. But the bigger story here has not changed, and won’t. It is the triumph of one man's monomaniacal desire to Have A Thing, even if the pursuit of it ruins everything about him. So hats off to him.
There is some good news, although it’s not in this photo. Among the chunks of his sporting empire Fisher is dumping to make this stadium happen are the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer. This divestiture surely means that the Quakes are on the verge of a championship, if not this year then soon, just on the basis of John Fisher no longer hanging around haunting the premises. MLS commissioner Don Garber will never have to take a photo with John Fisher while wearing a dayglo vest, a tool belt, and a kidney-stone grima-smile. At least someone's getting something good out of this.
