Allan Huber "Bud" Selig(born July 30, 1934) is the
Commissioner of Major League
Baseball, having served in that capacity since 1992 as the
acting commissioner, and as the official commissioner since 1998.
Selig oversaw baseball through the
1994 strike, the
introduction of the wild card,
interleague play, and the merging of the
National and American leagues under the Office of the Commissioner.
He was instrumental in organizing the
World Baseball Classic in 2006. Selig
also introduced revenue sharing. He is credited for the financial
turnaround of baseball during his tenure with a 400 percent
increase in the revenue of MLB and annual record breaking
attendance. Selig enjoys a high level of support from baseball
owners, but has been widely decried by both the MLB Players' Union
for his policies and by the general public for presiding over the
game during one of its most contentious periods.
Jerome Holtzman,
Major League Baseball's official
historian from 1999 until his passing in 2008, believed that Selig
was the best commissioner in baseball history.
During Selig's term of service,
the use of steroids and other
performance enhancing drugs became a public issue. The
Mitchell Report, commissioned by
Selig, concluded that the MLB commissioners, club officials, the
Players Association, and the players all share "to some extent in
the responsibility for the steroid era." Following the release of
the Mitchell Report, Congressman
Cliff
Stearns called publicly for Selig to step down as commissioner,
citing his "glacial response" to the "growing stain on baseball."
Selig has pledged on numerous occasions to rid baseball of
performance enhancing drugs, and has overseen and instituted many
rule changes and penalties to that end.
Selig was previously the team owner and team president of the
Milwaukee Brewers. As a Milwaukee
native, he is credited for keeping baseball in Milwaukee. In 1970,
he purchased the
Seattle Pilots in
bankruptcy court and renamed them the Milwaukee Brewers after a
minor league team he had watched in his youth. The Brewers went to
the
1982 World Series and won
seven organization of the year awards during his tenure. Selig
remains a resident of Milwaukee.
On January 17, 2008, Selig's contract was extended by the MLB
through 2012, at which point he plans to retire. Selig made $14.5
million in the 12-month period ending Oct. 31, 2005.
Early life
Selig was
born in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin
and grew up in a Jewish
family. He graduated from the University of
Wisconsin Madison
in 1956 with degrees in political science and history. He
served two years in the armed forces before working with his father
who owned a car leasing business in Milwaukee. Selig continues to
be involved in the automotive industry, serving as president of the
Selig Executive Lease Company.
As a young man, Selig watched the Milwaukee Brewers, a minor-league
affiliate of the
Chicago Cubs of the
National League, unrelated to the
current incarnation of the Milwaukee Brewers.
Bud soon became a
Braves fan when the National League
franchise moved to his home town of Milwaukee from Boston
in 1953.
Selig became the team's largest public stockholder.
Selig was heartbroken
and devastated when he learned that the Braves were going to leave
Milwaukee in favor of Atlanta
. In
1965, when the Braves left
Milwaukee, he divested his stock in the team.
Milwaukee Brewers owner
As a minority owner of the
Milwaukee
Braves, Selig founded the organization
Teams,
Inc, in an attempt to prevent the majority owners
(based out of Chicago) from moving the club to a larger television
market. This was challenged legally on the basis that no prior team
relocations (in the modern era) left a city without a team. Prior
movements had all originated in cities which were home to at least
two teams. When his quest to keep the team in Milwaukee finally
failed after the
1965 season, he
changed the group's name to
Milwaukee Brewers Baseball
Club, Inc., after the
minor league
baseball team he grew up watching, and devoted himself to
returning Major League Baseball to Milwaukee.
Selig
arranged for major league games to be played at the now demolished
Milwaukee County
Stadium
. The first, a pre-season match between the
Chicago White Sox and
Minnesota Twins, drew more than 51,000
spectators. Selig followed this up by hosting nine White Sox
regular-season games in
1968 and
eleven in
1969. Oddly enough, one
of the series played in Milwaukee that year was against the
expansion
Seattle Pilots, the team
that would become the Brewers. Those Milwaukee "home" games were
phenomenally successful, with the handful of games accounting for
about
one-third of total White Sox home attendance.
To satisfy that fanbase, Selig decided to purchase the White Sox
(with the intention of moving them to Milwaukee) in 1969. He
entered into an agreement to buy the club, but the
American League vetoed the sale, preferring
to keep an American League team in Chicago to compete with the
crosstown
Cubs. Selig turned his
attention to other franchises.
In
1970, he purchased the bankrupt
Seattle Pilots franchise, moving them to his hometown and
officially renaming the team the
Brewers.
During
Selig's tenure as club president, the Brewers participated in
postseason play in 1981, when the team finished first in the
American League East during the second half of the season, and in
1982, when the team made it to the World Series, under the leadership of
future Hall of
Famers
Robin Yount and Paul Molitor. Under Selig's watch, the
Brewers also won seven
Organization of the
Year awards. Selig was part of the owners'
collusion in
1985–
1987,
resulting in the owners paying
$280 million in damages to the
players.
Upon his assumption of the commissioner's role, Selig transferred
his ownership interest in the Brewers to his daughter
Wendy Selig-Prieb in order to remove any
technical conflicts of interest, though it was widely presumed he
maintained some hand in team operations.
Although the team has
been sold to Los Angeles
investor Mark
Attanasio, questions remain regarding Selig's past
involvement. Selig's defenders point to the poor management
of the team after Selig-Prieb took control as proof that Selig was
not working behind the scenes.
Acting Commissioner (1992–1998)
Selig became an increasingly vocal opponent of Commissioner
Fay Vincent, and soon became the leader
of a group of owners seeking his removal. Selig has never stated
that the owners
colluded, while
Vincent has:
Following an 18-9 no-confidence vote, Vincent resigned. Selig had
by this time become chairman of the
Executive Council of
Major League Baseball, and as such became
de facto acting commissioner.
His first major act was to institute the
Wild Card and
divisional playoff play, which has created much controversy amongst
baseball fans. Those against the Wild Card see it as diminishing
the importance of the
pennant race and
the regular season, with the true race often being for second
rather than first place, while those in favor of it view it as an
opportunity for teams to have a shot at the playoffs even when they
have no chance of a first-place finish in their division, thus
maintaining fan interest later in the season.
Selig suspended
Cincinnati Reds
owner
Marge Schott for a year in
1993 for repeated prejudicial
remarks and actions. The same year,
New
York Yankees owner
George
Steinbrenner was reinstated from a lifelong suspension that was
instituted by Selig's predecessor
Fay
Vincent.
Pete Rose has claimed that he
applied for reinstatement over the years and received no such
consideration. Rose, along with his close friend and former
teammate
Mike Schmidt (who is a strong
supporter of Rose's reinstatement into baseball), met with Selig in
2002, where Rose privately admitted
to Selig (two years before going public with his admission) about
betting on baseball. Bud Selig was a
close friend of the late
Bart
Giamatti, who was the commissioner when Rose was first banned
from the sport in
1989.
As acting commissioner, Selig represented MLB during the
1994 players strike and
cancelled the
World Series,
marking the first time the annual event had not been staged since
1904).
Commissioner (1998–present)
After a six-year search for a new commissioner, the owners voted to
give Selig the title on a permanent basis midway through the
1998 season.
During his tenure the game avoided a third work stoppage in
2002, and has seen the
implementation of
interleague
play.
Whereas in the past, the National and American Leagues had separate
administrative organizations (which, for example, allowed for the
introduction of different rules such as the
designated hitter), under Selig, Major
League Baseball consolidated the administrative functions of the
American and
National League into the Commissioner's
Office in
2000. The last official
presidents of the NL and AL were
Leonard S. Coleman, Jr. and Dr.
Gene Budig respectively.
Reaction after September 11, 2001
On September 11, 2001, Selig ordered all baseball games postponed
for a week because of the
terror attacks on New York and
Washington. The games were postponed not only out of respect
and mourning for the victims, but also out of concern for the
safety and security of fans and players.
After a dramatic conclusion of the
2001 World Series, less than 48 hours
later, Selig held a vote on contracting two teams, reportedly the
Minnesota Twins and
Montreal Expos.This action led to Selig
(along with former Expos owner
Jeffrey
Loria) being charged with racketeering and conspiring with
Loria to deliberately defraud the Expos minority owners. If found
guilty the league could have been liable for
$300 million in punitive damages. Selig
was eager to settle the case because the judge had previously ruled
that the Expos could not be moved or contracted until the case was
over. The case eventually went to arbitration and was settled out
of court for an undisclosed sum.
Changes to the MLB All-Star Game
An
embarrassing moment for Selig occurred during the 2002 All-Star Game
in Selig's hometown of Milwaukee
. The game was tied 7-7 in the bottom of the
11th inning. Unfortunately, the recent managerial custom of
granting some playing time within the regulation nine innings to as
many available players as possible meant that the managers had used
their entire rosters. To avoid risking the arms of the pitchers who
were currently on the mound, Selig declared the game a tie, to the
dissatisfaction of the Milwaukee fans. Since then, Selig has tried
to reinvigorate the All-Star Game, most notably by awarding the
winning league home-field advantage in the World Series. The
2003 All-Star
Game had the same U.S. viewership as 2002 (9.5
rating; 17
share) and
the ratings declined in 2004 (8.8 rating; 15 share) and 2005 (8.1
rating; 14 share). The American television audience increased in
2006 (9.3 rating; 16 share).
Disciplinary actions
On July 1, 2005, Selig suspended
Texas Rangers pitcher
Kenny Rogers for 20 games and
fined him
$50,000. Rogers got
in trouble when on June 29, 2005, he purposely grabbed the camera
of a cameraman, resulting in one camera falling to the ground. When
the cameraman proceeded to pick up his camera, Rogers went back to
him in an arguably threatening way. One of the reporters then
resumed filming and Rogers smiled and talked to him.
While an appeal of his
suspension was pending, Rogers appeared at the 2005 All-Star Game
in Detroit
, where fans
loudly booed him. On July 22, 2005, Selig heard Rogers'
appeal of his suspension; he decided to uphold the 20 games.
However, an independent arbitrator ruled that Selig had exceeded
his authority and reduced it to 13 games.
Performance-enhancing drugs
In
2005, Selig faced
Congress on the issue of
steroids. After the Congressional hearings
in early 2005, and with the scrutiny of the sports and national
media upon this issue, Selig put forth a proposal for a stricter
performance-enhancing drug testing regime to replace the current
system. This proposal also included the banning of
amphetamines, a first for the major North
American sports leagues. The
MLB Players
Association and MLB reached an agreement in November on the new
policy.
In early 2006, Selig was forced to deal with the issue of
steroid use.
On March 30, 2006, as a response to the controversy of the use of
performance-enhancing drugs and the anticipated career home run
record to be set by Barry Bonds, Selig asked former senator
George Mitchell to lead an
independent investigation into the use of steroids in baseball's
recent past.
Joe Sheehan from
Baseball Prospectus wrote that the
commission has been focusing "blame for the era exclusively on
uniformed personnel", and failing to investigate any role played by
team ownership and management.
Much controversy surrounded Selig and his involvement in
Barry Bonds' all-time home run record chase. For
months, speculation surrounded Selig and the possibility that he
and
Hank Aaron would not attend Bonds'
games as he closed in on the record. Selig announced in July 2007
when Bonds was near 755 home runs that he would attend the games.
Selig was in attendance for Bonds' record-tying home run against
the
San Diego Padres, sitting in
Padres owner
John Moores'
private suite. Bud Selig did not attend the San Francisco Giants'
baseball game on August 7 when Barry Bonds hit his record-breaking
756th home run; after the event, Selig released a statement
congratulating Bonds.
On
November 15, 2007, attention was brought once again to Barry Bonds
as he was indicted by a federal Grand Jury for perjury and
obstruction of justice in
connection to his testimony before the Grand Jury regarding
BALCO, a San Francisco
Bay area lab known to be
involved in the distribution of steroids to
professional athletes.
On December 13, 2007, former
U.S.
Senator George Mitchell released
his report on the use of
performance-enhancing substances by MLB players. The report
names many current and former players who allegedly used
performance-enhancing drugs during their career, including
Roger Clemens,
Andy
Pettitte,
Miguel Tejada,
Eric Gagné, and
Paul
Lo Duca.
Selig has been widely criticized for not taking an active enough
role to stem the tide of steroid use in baseball until it had
blossomed into a debilitating problem for the industry.
Chicago Sun Times columnist
Jay Mariotti called Selig the "The Steroids
Commissioner." Selig has been called to
Congress several times to testify on
performance enhancing drug use. Congressman
Cliff Stearns said in December 2007 that Selig
should resign because of use of performance enhancing drugs in
baseball during his tenure.
Post-Season Schedule
Selig's decision to extend the traditional post-season schedule
into November in an attempt to increase Nielsen ratings was met
with widespread disdain, both inside and outside the baseball
community. Mike Sciosia, manager of the American League West
Division Champion Los Angeles Angels, dismissed the decision as
“Ridiculous. I don’t know. Can I say it any clearer than that? We
should have never had a day off last Wednesday. We should never
have three days off after the season. You shouldn’t even have two
days off after the season
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/sports/baseball/25yankees.html?hpw)."
Term of service
On December 1, 2006, Selig announced that he would be retiring as
commissioner of baseball upon the expiration of his contract in
2009. Selig earned $14.5 million from MLB over the timespan October
31, 2005 to October 31, 2006. However, on January 17, 2008, Selig's
contract was extended by MLB through 2012, at which point he plans
to retire.
Notable changes to Major League Baseball
Bud Selig helped introduce the following changes to Major League
Baseball:
During
Selig's terms as Executive Council Chairman (from 1992–1998) and
Commissioner, new stadiums have opened in Arizona
, Atlanta
, Cincinnati
, Cleveland
, Colorado
, Detroit
, Houston
, Milwaukee, Philadelphia
, Pittsburgh
, San
Diego
, San
Francisco
, Seattle
, Arlington
, St.
Louis
, Washington, D.C.
, Queens
, and
The
Bronx
, with stadiums scheduled for the Twins
and the Marlins
in future years.
Israel Baseball League
Selig and his family served a supportive role on the Advisory Board
of the
Israel Baseball League
during its inaugural season in 2007. In response to issues with the
league's financial management, after the season, the Selig family
requested that their names be removed from the list of board
members.
Family
Selig is married to his second wife, Sue Selig. He has two
daughters from his previous marriage, Wendy Selig-Prieb and Sari
Selig-Kramer, as well as a stepdaughter, Lisa Steinman. Selig-Prieb
used to work for the Brewers, and Steinman currently works for MLB.
He has five granddaughters: Emily Markenson, Alyssa Markenson,
Marissa Savitch, Andria Savitch, and Natalie Prieb.
References
External links
, becoming the Washington Nationals (2004)
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