Take out a piece of paper. Make a list. Number it one through 30. Then start listing the reasons that each team and fan base have to loathe Bud Selig.

I'm not going to pretend I know the reason for all 30 teams, but they exist. It's almost a physical law that they have to. Even though Selig helped the Giants stay in San Francisco, my thoughts about the man would always trend toward the negative side. Hank Aaron is the true home run king, the strike, the strike ruining Matt Williams's home run chase, the All-Star Game tie, the Wild Card, the Wild Card coming a year too late for my team, the convenient come-to-Jesus moment with steroids once the backlash was raging, allowing A.J. Pierzynski to exist ... it's a lengthy, lengthy list.

And yet, there's no question that everything is different as Selig steps down. I used to get so angry about Selig. So very angry. His face would appear on my TV, and my brow would furrow. When he talked, my brain sprouted neural arms and either a) made a wanking motion or b) shook a tiny fist at the sky. He was the worst, a poison, a villain. He was the death of baseball, the worst that America had to offer, an amalgam of oligarchy and plutocracy with one finger up its nose and another held upright, pointed at you.

For the life of me, I can't remember why he made me so angry.

I can read the Wikipedia page. The strike was the worst. Looking the other way for Sosa/McGwire was understandable; pretending that he had no idea was the worst. There were substantial changes to the structure of the postseason, and then there were more. Those are all bullet points in a memorandum titled "Check out what this jerk is doing to the game you love."

That memorandum looks like it's written in a foreign language now. I used to hate Bud Selig, but for the last few years, he's been a mascot. He's Owner P. Lurch, seven feet tall and made of foam, and he's there whenever there's a draft, a record being broken, a World Series trophy presentation. There's no hate. There's no loathing. It's just, hey, look, there that guy is again.

I know that guy! Shoot a shirt at me from your t-shirt gun, Owner P. Lurch!

This isn't the case for everyone, I realize. A's fans still have the absolute right to be appalled and disgusted at how the territorial rights situation was handled. They were put on hold six years ago, the hold music was Hoobastank, and Selig climbed out the bathroom window. For me, though, the anger is gone. It's been gone for years. I'm not sure where the tipping point was. Possibly a few years ago, when the NHL was in the middle of an ugly lockout, and several smart people told me, unequivocally, that Selig was the best commissioner of any of the four North American sports, and it wasn't close. Things can be worse, it finally registered. Look at the bozo leading the NFL and imagine what baseball would be like if Selig wasn't even smart enough to be cunning. Brrr.

Selig is smart. He was very, very good at what he wanted to do, which is make money for the owners. He helped get so many stadiums get built, most of them using public money, that one of the shiniest new stadiums when he took over as acting commissioner, Rogers Centre, is now the seventh-oldest stadium in baseball. Three or four of the older stadiums are classics that their teams want to keep, which means there are just two or three teams that could realistically want a new ballpark within the next 10 years.

There's money in the sport. Baseball hit the ball out of the park (baseball term) with MLB.tv and MLB Advanced Media, perspiring liquid cash despite ludicrous blackout rules. Attendance is booming. For all the talk about the A's and their desperate need for a new stadium, note that they drew almost twice as much as the A's and Giants did combined 40 years ago.

And that's all why Selig doesn't inspire the rage and ire anymore, at least in one baseball nerd. Everyone is happy with their cartoonish sacks of cash. Everyone is content. Everyone is quiet. There's no acrimony, at least not like we're accustomed to. We all got used to the Wild Card and interleague play. The last CBA came together quickly and quietly, as if it were a formality. Steroids are finally the third, fourth, or 24th thing people think of when they hear the word "baseball," not the first. Money kind of makes everything go away.

The only unexplained storyline in the series finale is a new stadium for Oakland, and that's a big deal. It's not something that concerns the average baseball fan unless it's in their backyard, though. Selig leaves the sport in peace and with a Scrooge McDuck vault for the owners to dive in. How do you rage at that? What's the point? Were we really so mad about the All-Star Game tie once upon a time? And what was that thing ... you know ... when the players didn't play the games and the World Series didn't happen ... was that real?

No, I don't remember what it felt like to be so angry at Bud Selig. The reasons are easy to look up, but the feelings are distant, a high school relationship between people with funny haircuts that seems like it happened to someone else. The incoming commissioner, Rob Manfred, doesn't mean a thing to me yet. A decade or two ago, a new commissioner would have been someone to study, a cause for tentative celebration. Now, though, he's the guy in charge of a finely tuned machine. The machine is a robot that spits out money and dances for our amusement, and look at the little feller go.

SB Nation presents: The best and worst of Bud Selig's legacy

When Selig started, I wanted him to stop screwing up. If baseball fans could yell one thing at him over the years, that would be it. "Hey, Selig, stop screwing up." Yet, somehow, he's leaving baseball in a spot where the only possible thing to yell at the next guy is "Hey, don't screw it up." Selig's run was an imperfect, flawed, maddening era. The strike really was a disgrace, and the nicest thing you can say about the Steroid Era is that it was completely bungled for several years. Here's Selig leaving, though, and it's going to be almost impossible for the next guy to leave the sport in better shape than he found it.

Not sure how that happened. Not sure when everything changed. But it turned out that Selig didn't fly the plane into the mountain. He landed safely and gave you something out of the SkyMall catalog for free. I swear the plane was upside-down at one point.

Best of luck to Commissioner Manfred, then. Get the A's a new stadium. Help the Rays out. Stop that stupid homefield advantage thing with the All-Star Game. Pay the minor leaguers more and figure out a way to feed them better. Mostly, though, don't touch anything. Turns out that almost everything is working just fine.