Sports Illustrated has just reported that the Milwaukee Brewers have decided to threaten the state of Wisconsin with relocation if they don’t build the team a shiny new stadium. That’s right, less than 25 years after three construction workers were killed building their current stadium, which was mostly funded through taxes that were being collected as recently as three and a half years ago, the Brewers are now threatening to leave if they don’t get hundreds of millions of dollars worth of renovations funded using public funds. Why do they feel like they can act like cartoon villains? Because the man at the top, MLB’s commissioner Rob Manfred, has given them the green light.

Manfred, who famously lied about the city of Oakland’s negotiations with the Athletics as part of his mission to deliver the team to Las Vegas, Athletics fans be damned, said just a few months ago that the Brewers were doing a great job of keeping the team in Milwaukee—well, as long as they got some funding to fix the stadium. It didn’t take much to see that he was basically telling the Wisconsin legislature to get a funding package together, and quick, if they didn’t want the Brewers to go the way of the Athletics. In that context, it’s no wonder the Brewers feel empowered to start making similar threats.

All of this comes back to the same problem: Rob Manfred simply doesn’t understand baseball beyond the financial numbers surrounding TV rights contracts. Just yesterday, I went to MLB.tv to watch my Cubs play the Blue Jays (yes, I’m a Cubs fan, but Brewers fans don’t deserve this, especially with how many teams Milwaukee has already lost!). I happen to live in OKC these days, so it’s already pretty miserable trying to follow MLB games considering that I’m blacked out from watching FOUR teams: the Astros, the Royals, the Rangers, and the Cardinals (that’s right, I can’t even watch some of the biggest rivalry games for the Cubs). But that’s no problem right, because the Blue Jays aren’t on that list! Well, actually, the game was being broadcast on Apple TV, so I still couldn’t watch it despite the fact that I already pay for MLB.tv as an out-of-market fan.

What are we even doing here? How the hell does Manfred expect teams to cultivate new fans if you need an Excel spreadsheet and three different subscriptions (MLB.tv, ESPN and TBS for national games, and now Apple TV, apparently) just to figure out how to watch a game? How does he expect people to put any emotional investment into local teams if they can just up and decide to move whenever they want, even if it’s been less than a quarter century since the local people have put their money and blood—literally—into a supposedly state-of-the-art stadium, one with a retractable dome, no less?

We know Manfred doesn’t care as long as the money keeps rolling in. Well, maybe one day he’ll realize that you need there to be at least SOME fans for there to also be money. As for me, I at least have the AAA OKC Dodgers to tide me over until Manfred decides that the minor leagues as a whole just don’t make “financial sense” anymore. After that, maybe Major League Cricket will take me.