Rob Manfred elected 10th commissioner of Major League Baseball

Jimmy Fallon was at Yankee Stadium on Thursday night, and he attempted to chug a beer like every good baseball fan does.

CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! (OK, he spilled a lot, but it’s the thought that counts.)

On his first day as MLB commissioner, Rob Manfred pledged Sunday to make the game of baseball more accessible to the next generation of fans as well as to continue to modernize the sport “without interfering with its history and traditions.” How he achieves those ends may not sit well with traditional or sabermetric fans alike: He believes in using a pitch clock to speed up pace of play and may seek to limit the defensive shifts that have become more prominent in recent years in order to increase offense.

“Pace of play is an issue that’s driven by our society today,” Manfred told ESPN. “Our society is a very fast-paced society. Attention spans are shorter. I think that it’s very important to us at least symbolically to say to fans, we understand that you want this to move as quickly as possible and we’re going to continue to modernize the game, without harming its traditions, in a way that makes it more enjoyable and more attune to the society that we live in.”

Major League Baseball Chief Operating Officer Rob Manfred has been elected to succeed the outgoing Commissioner Bud Selig. The final vote was officially unanimous, but news reports throughout the day suggest that was merely symbolic and that there was a hardcore group of owners, eight in total, who were against him. According to the New York Daily News, five American League teams, the Red Sox, Blue Jays, White Sox, Angels, and A’s, and three National League teams, the Nationals, Reds, and Diamondbacks, preferred Red Sox partner Tom Werner as the next commissioner. Ultimately one of the anti-Manfred eight changed their vote, at which point the other seven threw in the towel and voted for the winner for the sake of unanimity. It doesn’t mean they’re for him, nor does it mean they will cooperate with him or even cease working to convert other owners to their point of view and eventually install a man more to their liking.

Baseball owners have always been a fractious group. The National Commission that loosely ran the game before the advent of the commissioner system, and every commissioner after Judge Landis, had to manage coalitions to make the game work. Often they failed. Leaving aside Bart Giamatti, who died in office, Ford Frick, who retired when no one could honestly say whether or not having him in the office was any different than not having him in the office, and the visibly wilting Mr. Selig, everyone else was pushed out the door.

Rob Manfred was introduced on Thursday as the next Major League Baseball commissioner, set to take over for Bud Selig in Jan. 2015. In his introductory press conference Manfred, who in his 15 years as an MLB executive has worked closely with the MLB players union to negotiate three different collective bargaining agreements, preached a continued labor peace.

“On behalf of the players, I want to congratulate Rob Manfred on being named Major League Baseball’s 10th Commissioner. As representative of the players, I look forward to working closely with Rob, the Clubs’ representative, as we strive to sustain the growing popularity and prosperity of our great game,” Clark said. “Personally, I have known Rob for more than 15 years, and I’m confident that his vast experience in all aspects of the sport will serve his commissionership well.”

That the 30-0 vote that swept chief operating officer Rob Manfred into the commissioner’s office wasn’t truly unanimous shouldn’t really surprise anyone. As sports fans we understand that just because a game ended 8-3 doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good game. So it was that the final vote in the election of Major League Baseball’s 10th commissioner was less of a route than it truly seemed.

So there it is. A lot of rigmarole for basically an extension of the current policies. There are no doubt going to be differences between Manfred and Selig, especially in regards to how he deals with specific clubs. As far as MLB goes, though, Manfred was one of the architects behind the current system, so anything resembling sweeping changes seems unlikely at best.