TORONTO – The Baltimore Orioles did not file tampering charges against the Toronto Blue Jays for their off-season pursuit of Dan Duquette but “stricter adherence to written permissions” is needed to avoid similar situations in the future, commissioner Rob Manfred told Sportsnet on Monday.
“We actually have pretty good rules in place,” he said when asked about the matter during an interview. “I think it’s an issue of educating people about those rules and making clear to people that you’re going to enforce the rules. That situation lingered too long, we hope that with a little better enforcement and some education, we’ll avoid those problems in the future.”
The drama over Duquette, the Orioles general manager pursued to replace Paul Beeston as president and CEO, leaked during baseball’s winter meetings in December and lingered into January, before the Blue Jays walked away from negotiations because of the exorbitant asking price.
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Afterwards, there were suggestions from Baltimore that the Orioles may pursue tampering charges against the Blue Jays, but when asked if any were ever filed, Manfred replied, “no.”
The Blue Jays were also denied permission to speak with Chicago White Sox executive vice-president Kenny Williams last winter, eventually re-signing Beeston to a one-year deal.
“I don’t want to get into who did what to whom, I don’t think that’s really productive at this point,” Manfred said. “The real issue, it’s the tampering rule that’s relevant, and I think a little stricter adherence to written permissions with respect to discussions with executives that are limited in time and scope help avoid those sorts of lingering problems.”
Manfred, in Toronto as part of his season-opening tour, was hired by Beeston when the latter served as Major League Baseball’s chief operating officer.
“Going to work at Major League Baseball, a big part of it was commissioner [Bud] Selig becoming the permanent commissioner but Paul being in New York was also important to me,” said Manfred. “We’d always been good friends. We’ve had differing views on issues over the years, but we remain good friends, and one of the reasons I wanted to come up here was because we have been close over time, and this was one of the places I wanted to visit.”
Among Beeston’s projects this season has been working to bring the all-star game back to Toronto for the first time since 1991. While the Blue Jays are hoping to replace the Rogers Centre’s artificial turf with natural grass in time for the 2018 season, failure to do so will not prevent them from hosting the Midsummer Classic.
“For a one-game event, I just don’t see it as a big deal, I really don’t,” said Manfred. “We play major-league games here all the time, you can play an all-star game here with artificial turf or natural grass, it doesn’t matter to me.”
