Rob Manfred's Mandate

— -- It was the summer before baseball canceled the World Series when Reggie Jackson stood in front of a podium placed before an open field populated with thousands of baseball fans in upstate New York and, with uncharacteristic humility, observed that he was just a link in the chain.

Jackson then added a warning and an admonition, words that Rob Manfred, the newly elected 10th commissioner of Major League Baseball, would do well to hold close.

"If the game is lost to the economics that drive it, then we'll lose the humanity that is unique to the game," Jackson said on the occasion of his induction into the Hall of Fame. "We all must feel it and live it in our own way and be mindful of its vulnerability to abuse. From the millions to the billions that this game has come to represent, we all take from this cherished game. Stop and remember Buck O'Neil and 'The Scooter' and all the people who played for the love of the game."