Discussion with MLB’s Manfred a home run with Parkersburg High School students
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PARKERSBURG -- The top of Major League Baseball's food chain appeared via teleconference for a question-and-answer session with students in Parkersburg High School's "Sports in American Culture" class.
Instructor Sam Vincent invites popular sports figures to spend time describing their field of expertise to the class. On Wednesday morning inside the school's library, nearly 50 students had questions prepared for MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, learning about his background, his duties and how the game is ever-changing through social media and rule revisions.
For the occasion, several MLB teams were represented by students wearing Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates attire, as well as a Baltimore Orioles jersey worn by Vincent, who remembers his first experience as a baseball fan watching Cal Ripken break Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played.
Manfred, who was raised in a small town in upstate New York, attended Cornell University then went to Harvard Law School before joining a private practice for a large law firm in Washington, D.C.
"Over a period of 10 years, I spent the bulk of my time in private practice representing baseball on a variety of matters," he said. "I formed a relationship with my predecessor Bud Selig and joined their organization then eventually (was) promoted to CEO in 2012, then elected commissioner in 2014."
For 35 minutes, PHS students took turns asking Manfred questions on topics like his favorite players of all time, racial and gender diversity in the game, rule changes, possible locations for expansion and the disparity in payrolls among Major League teams.
"Through this class and the people Mr. Vincent brings in, I learn a lot about what I want to do when I grow up," PHS senior Landon Bryan said. "These people take time out of their day to talk to us about how they got to where they are."
"It's awesome that Mr. Vincent can get a hold of these people," fellow PHS senior Caden Parker said. "I want to thank Mr. Vincent for all he does with the people he gets. It shows me it's possible. They are real people. You see them on TV and you think sports, but they have real personalities. They are real people behind the scenes. It's cool to get to know them as a person and not just in the business."
Manfred, who grew up a New York Yankees fan but stated how he must remain unbiased toward all 30 MLB organizations, touched on Willie Mays and Hank Aaron as his all-time favorites but in the same breath wanted to wait and see the complete body of work when Japan's Shohei Ohtani's career eventually comes to a close.
PHS sophomore Kennedy Porter, who is the daughter of Warren High School baseball coach Chad Porter, brought up the issue of gender equality eventually catching up in the sport.
Manfred spent significant time breaking down how baseball decided to implement several rule changes with the pitch clock, limiting the pitcher's number of pickoff attempts and larger bases.
The technology is there for a robotic strike zone, he said.
Manfred concluded his discussion with the PHS students answering a question posed to him in regards to the Los Angeles Dodgers' spending spree as opposed to an Oakland Athletics organization maintaining an extremely low budget.
"We have had tremendous competitive balance in the game -- we haven't had a repeat World Series champ in a couple of decades," Manfred said. "We had a high payroll team in the Texas Rangers and (a) pretty low payroll team in the Arizona Diamondbacks. I do believe payroll disparity affects fan perception of the fairness of the competition. Those are big issues for us.
"Longer term, I believe you will see baseball move to the kind of model you see in the other sports. You have four major professional sports in the United States. Three of them do it one way with a salary cap -- we do a different way. At some point, you have to ask yourself, do those three sports have (it) wrong and you have it right? Or do you have it wrong and they have it right?"
Before Manfred exited the interview, Parker had one last request for the commissioner. Being a Yankees fan as well, Parker asked if Manfred could set him up with a pair of tickets at Yankee Stadium. Manfred chuckled and told Parker to get a date and two tickets would be waiting for him.
"I will have to look at the schedule and hopefully get an email out to him as soon as I can," said Parker, who already had Bryan locked in for the second ticket. "I wonder where our seats will be."
Kerry Patrick can be reached at kpatrick@newsandsentinel.com