Bud Selig takes his final swings as commissioner
Bud Selig is a self-described history buff who would rather let history judge him than the other way around.
"It's hard for me," he told USA TODAY Sports in a telephone interview as he sets to embark on his final season as commissioner of Major League Baseball. "While I'm very proud of what has happened, and there have been more changes in the last 22 years than really at any other time in baseball history, I'm going to let historians determine what my legacy is."
They will have their hands full, and he is proud of that. Unprecedented economic growth, protracted labor peace, a delayed but fierce show of force in the fight against performance-enhancing drugs and a final warm embrace of the technological benefits of instant replay are among the MLB accomplishments that Selig presided over or engineered himself.
"People talk about sports and popularity," said Selig, who turns 80 in July. "Well, this sport is more popular today than it has ever been by a long shot by any criteria one wants to use. Any criteria. Did I believe in 1992 or 1994 or 1996 that this would happen? No, I wouldn't be honest if I told you I did."
The last baseball season in Selig's 22-year reign as commissioner gets underway in earnest Sunday and Monday. Only one of the nine men who have held the title of commissioner of baseball has served longer than Selig, and that was the first, the legendary Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
Asked if the thought of leaving the game he has been a part of for decades made him sad, Selig replied, "Not yet."
Make no mistake, he is leaving. After changing his mind about an original plan to retire in 2012, Selig confirmed that, yes, "unequivocally," this is it.
"A lot of people, including a lot of owners, are having a hard time believing that, but January 24, 2015, will be my last day," he said.
He leaves the game at financial heights he never could have imagined, from $1.2 billion in annual revenue in 1992 to more than $8 billion last year.
"I used to say to myself for many months, I used to dream about this: How do we get to $2 billion?" he said. "How do we start to make things happen? Baseball had been, to that point, in a little bit of a neutral position. It just hadn't moved. It had this horrible labor history. Every 2-3 years, we had a war, a war on everyone's nerves, most importantly on the fans'."
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LESSONS FROM 1994
In some ways, Selig marks time from 1994, when a 232-day strike led to the first-ever cancellation of the World Series.
"We had had seven work stoppages before then," he said. "We had had the worst labor history between the parties that you could imagine. I told (union chief) Don Fehr this: 'We inherited an almost intolerable situation.' It broke my heart, '94, but we had been headed for that for 2½ decades. As painful and heartbreaking as it was, and it was painful and it was heartbreaking, I'd like to think that maybe it led to these 21 years of labor peace, and I hope a lot longer."
Fehr was a significant player in another historic moment for Selig and MLB: the sport's long, slow slog to a strong drug testing program. Had Fehr and the players union not been so staunchly against it, Selig probably would have been able to institute testing sooner than he did. Instead, MLB was quite late to the party, beginning preliminary testing in 2003 and testing for real in 2004, 32 years after the Olympic Games started testing for steroids.
But once MLB was in, it went all-in, becoming the leader among all U.S. professional leagues in catching its many cheaters.
"A lot of people have said we were slow to react," Selig said. "I don't believe that, but OK. ...
"Here we are today, you have the union, they have been cooperative the last 4-5 years — give (late executive director) Mike Weiner a lot of credit for that, and now Tony Clark. I'm very confident we're up to date. I talk to the trainers and doctors all the time. They say the clubhouses are like they've never been. Never. They say amphetamines are gone. While nothing in life is ever perfect, I use a line to the clubs all the time that my father always told me: 'Nothing is good or bad except by comparison.' I think we're doing pretty well to say the least. I'm really proud."
Selig and MLB particularly flexed their muscles during the Biogenesis scandal last year, when they suspended 14 players based on evidence as opposed to failed drug tests. Only one player, Alex Rodriguez, fought the discipline, and the beleaguered New York Yankees third baseman eventually surrendered and accepted a full-season ban.
"Once we had all the information we had, and given the belief in a tough drug testing program, it has to be enforced in a very aggressive way," Selig said. "That's what we did, and we would do it again. ... You're never happy when you have to do things like that, but OK, whatever it is, it is. It's done. We enforced it aggressively, and people now know exactly what we'll do in these set of circumstances."
EMBRACING REPLAY
It also took MLB quite some time to figure out how it wanted to use expanded instant replay, but as of this season, it has officially entered the 21st century. The result is a complex system in which managers can call for reviews and many of the game's most controversial calls will no longer be missed.
"I was a guy that four or five years ago said, 'I didn't like it,' " Selig said. "I have to give credit to John Schuerholz, Joe Torre, Tony La Russa. They worked hard, they came up with the system. At a couple of spring training games in Arizona, I heard it was really interesting, it was a close play and immediately the crowd started chanting 'Replay' in a very good-natured way. It's going to work out great. There's no question. In fact, I'm very confident it will speed the game up a little bit rather than having long arguments. I'm excited, and I think our fans are excited."
For Selig, traditionalism was eventually trumped by something he has always considered as important, if not more so: the experience of the fan.
"I'll tell you what else bothered me, in ballparks — and I'm always very sensitive to fans — when you had a controversial play in baseball, you couldn't show it on the (video) board or we wouldn't allow it. That made no sense. If you and I went to a ballgame and we're out there and we don't know, but if we had stayed home and watched it on television, we could see it on the replay or if we're up in a suite, we could see it — it was absolutely wrong as far as the fans are concerned."
Given that change didn't exactly happen overnight on drug testing or replay, it might not be surprising to learn that when asked if there is anything he might have done differently in his tenure as commissioner, Selig said this:
"I don't think so. I am deliberate — a lot of people will kid me about that — but that has worked well for me. I do take my time, try to think of all the pluses and minuses. I'm comfortable with everything that happened."
In retirement, Selig looks forward to writing a book and continuing to teach at Marquette and the University of Wisconsin, which is his alma mater.
But first, there's another baseball season.
"I was just studying the divisions," he said. "We have really competitive divisions this year. It's going to be remarkable. All these changes have really helped the game, impacted the game, and I'm proud of that."
Selig even has his own plan for his final season.
"What I'd like to do, and I'm going to do, is visit all 30 ballparks," he said. "I want to talk to people, fans, people who work at ballparks. I did this when I owned and ran the (Milwaukee) Brewers, I used to walk the ballpark talking to people, and I love that. That's how you grew up understanding what the game is all about and what makes it so special."