The commissioner’s lack of thought or action over the unwarranted Kevin Brown suspension is more than just a terrible look.

In 1988, the Democratic National Convention rocked to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s list of doings and concurrent demands of Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, “Where was George?” Those who knew too well of (speaking politely) Kennedy’s rakish and adulterous ways snarked right back, “Dry, sober, and home with his wife.”

This week’s uproar over Orioles broadcaster Kevin Brown’s suspension on perhaps the most nebulous grounds imaginable should have prompted the demand, “Where was Rob?”

Since not enough owners proved dry and sober enough to look all the way deep, the commissioner has another term to serve, through 2029. How delicious is this: Manfred got his extension on the same day Brown was last seen and heard on television for the Orioles. And from the moment we learned the Orioles took Brown’s matter-of-fact comparison between the Orioles’s lack of success in the Rays’ home stadium the past couple of years and its success there this year as fouling their nest, Manfred’s silence has been as deafening as a heavy metal concert.

The clip in question has been viral this week. It’s impossible to hear it and conclude that Brown was anything other than absolutely complimentary about the 2023 Oriole turnaround in Tropicana Field. The turnaround was included in the team-provided game notes. That didn’t stop Orioles boss John Angelos or a designated subordinate from suspending Brown.

It took Awful Announcing to unearth the suspension. It took about ten seconds from their posting it aboard the social media site formerly known as Twitter for the suspension to go pandemic-level viral. It took about that much time, too, for the Orioles to start taking it on the chin for Angelos’s stupidity. But it’s still too much time without a peep from the so-called steward of the game.

Major league broadcasters poured out support for Brown en masse. One, Yankee broadcaster Michael Kay, said that if Angelos didn’t like Brown speaking the plain facts, “then he’s thin-skinned, he’s unreasonable, and he should actually get a call from Rob Manfred, the commissioner of baseball, because it’s unconscionable that you would actually suspend a good broadcaster for no reason whatsoever.”

So far as anyone knows at this writing, Angelos hasn’t gotten the call. Not even after broadcast legend Al (Do you believe in miracles? Yes!) Michaels said (to ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap), “I thought that it was either a joke or there was something much more insidious behind the suspension. And now that I realize that it had everything to do with what was said about Tampa Bay and playing the Rays. I agree, there should be a suspension here. They should suspend the doofus that suspended Kevin Brown.”

Manfred is renowned for a good many things that don’t include statesmanship. Baseball’s version of Winston Churchill he isn’t. But the commissioner has a very broad mandate within the rules outlining his job to act in the best interests of baseball and to act against a team, a player, a manager, an umpire, anyone who’s done something he believes detrimental to the game and the trust the public holds for it.

Commissioners have not always deployed that broad power wisely, of course. Without saying so outright, or with mealymouthed denials, Kenesaw Mountain Landis upheld the disgraceful colour line that wouldn’t be broken until after his death. (His successor, Happy Chandler, told Pittsburgh Courier legend Wendell Smith, “I’m for the Four Freedoms, and if a black boy can make it at Okinawa and go to Guadalcanal, he can make it in baseball”—and proved it by approving Branch Rickey’s signing of Jackie Robinson.)

Bowie Kuhn tried and failed to suppress Jim Bouton’s Ball Four but succeeded in stopping Charlie Finley’s post-Messersmith fire sale of several key Athletics players. The former merely left Kuhn resembling a damned fool. The latter, with its concurrent cap of $400,000 for player sales, probably did as much as any capricious free agency spending spree to abet the salary structure’s inflation and block truly less-endowed teams from sustained financial competitiveness.

And Fay Vincent’s foolish attempt to strong-arm three Yankee officials including then-manager Buck Showalter out of their testimony on behalf of drug-troubled relief pitcher Steve Howe just might have been the wick that lit the powder keg forcing Vincent—already in enough owners’ crosshairs over intervening in the 1990 spring lockout and other business issues—to resign before he could be fired in 1992.

Maybe Manfred didn’t like the thought that calling Angelos out or even disciplining him over the Brown suspension might amount to biting one of the hands that feeds him. Maybe he thought that calling Angelos out or even disciplining him over Brown would have compelled him to address the known Oriole brass objections to Brown’s observation included implications that they were “cheap.”

Translation further: Maybe Manfred thought calling out and disciplining Angelos over Brown would amount to admitting the Orioles tanked their way to where they are today. Manfred has objected to tanking verbally in the past while doing little to nothing in the public perception to put a stop to something that amounts to fan abuse. Tanks for nothing.

But there are times when a commissioner must consider that, as longtime New York Times writer George Vecsey once formulated (and as I’ve borrowed shamelessly over the years), the common good of the game isn’t the same thing as merely making money for the owners.

Manfred thought nothing of dropping a heavy fine upon Astros owner Jim Crane;  suspending general manager Jeff Luhnow, manager A.J. Hinch, and former bench coach Alex Cora; and, eliminating key draft picks from the team over the next couple of years, after the exposure and investigation of Astrogate. If he could act in the game’s best interest over its worst cheating scandal ever, he could certainly act on behalf of saying there’s no place for censorship on the baseball air.

He could, but he hasn’t.

Brown is due to return to the Orioles’ television booth tonight, when the American League East leaders open a weekend series against the Mariners in Seattle. Sports Illustrated‘s Jimmy Traina offers a sobering point when suggesting that Brown will be in a somewhat untenable position going in:

He’ll return to the airwaves with no explanation of him going MIA. His every word will be dissected and fans watching, while admiring and respecting Brown, will fully expect him to watch his every word, which hurts his credibility.

The poor guy has basically been neutered. A quick check of Brown’s Twitter account shows he hasn’t tweeted since July 26. Before that, Brown rarely went two or three days without tweeting. He’s probably terrified to say anything because he knows he can’t address the injustice he experienced honestly.

It’s just surreal to think about the irreparable damage that has been done by the Orioles in this situation.

“Free Kevin Brown” chants in Camden Yards a couple of nights ago must have fallen upon deaf ears in the commissioner’s office. Those fans would have been justified completely if they’d altered those chants with chanting “Where was Rob?” This time, answering “Dry, sober, and home with his wife” won’t be enough.

The doofus who suspended and thus may also have neutered Brown remains unsuspended yet. Where is Rob?