Selig the great?

[VNV Nation]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/28/sp...ll/28SELI.html

here's part of a ridiculously long feature on Selig by the NYT.

Baseball Commissioner and Consensus Builder
By MURRAY CHASS


he acting commissioner was seething. Taking a break from a baseball owners meeting that had taken an unexpected turn, Bud Selig walked down the hotel corridor gesturing as if he had a machine gun and was mowing down everything in sight.

"I was not happy that day," Selig, now the commissioner, recalled the other day. "My language was bad. Let's say it was profane."

The subject of that meeting in September 1993 was Major League Baseball's proposed realignment into three divisions in each league, and the addition of a wild-card playoff team in each league. The plan encountered unexpected opposition, primarily from the managing partner of the Texas Rangers, who some years later would become president of the United States.

Selig was irate because he had expected the vote on realignment to proceed smoothly. It was a unique moment. In Selig's 10 years as baseball's boss, that was the only time that he or anyone else could recall that he did not have the votes or know ahead of time what the vote would be.

Two days later Selig did have the votes, and three-division play and the wild card were born.

"It is amazing," John Harrington, the former chief executive of the Boston Red Sox, said of Selig's vote-getting ability. "It comes back to his persistence. There's a saying up on the wall in his office about persistence paying off. He wears on you. His persistence pays off."

With ultimate authority on the clubs' side, Selig is one of two men who will determine whether the players strike on Friday for the sixth time in three decades. The other is Donald Fehr, the executive director of the union. They are the leaders who will decide how far they are willing to go to reach a compromise on a new labor agreement and ensure that the rest of the season and the postseason will be played.

The players trust Fehr to make correct decisions for them because he has built on Marvin Miller's foundation and gained vast riches for them. The owners trust Selig to make the right decisions for them because he was one of them, knows their needs and serves as the consensus commissioner.

Peter Ueberroth, the commissioner from 1984 to 1989, did not talk to owners but told them what to do; Selig talks incessantly to owners and finds out what they want to do and sells them on what he thinks they should do.

Rob Manfred, the clubs' chief labor lawyer, has said more than once in recent weeks that Selig has the votes to approve a deal. Other officials have said that no bloc of owners exists that could block a deal.

That Selig's aides speak with such confidence is testimony to the way he operates.

"He is a master politician; he'd be at home in the U.S. Senate or the House of Parliament," Larry Lucchino, chief executive of the Boston Red Sox, said.

Fred Wilpon, the Mets' owner and a close friend of Selig's even though they often disagree on issues, said Selig works at building consensus. "He is constantly in touch with all of the people in the game," Wilpon said. "He is able to listen. He doesn't necessarily agree, but he's able to listen."

Lessons of Ownership

Selig, 68, traces his modus operandi to his baseball mentor, John Fetzer, who owned the Detroit Tigers when Selig came into baseball with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1970.

Only 35 at the time, Selig had been instrumental in bringing baseball back to his hometown. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin and serving two years in the armed forces, Selig went to work with his father in the automobile business. But when the Braves left Milwaukee after the 1965 season, Selig formed Teams Inc., and worked for four years before heading a group that bought the bankrupt Seattle Pilots and moved them to Milwaukee.

He recalled his first owners meeting, with Bowie Kuhn as a relatively new commissioner.

"Bowie puts me between Phil Wrigley and Gussie Busch," Selig recalled. "It was all about labor, and after two hours I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I remember riding back to Detroit with Mr. Fetzer, who was a very enlightened human being."

Fetzer, Selig said, "convinced me the best way to do things was to listen to everybody," adding: "Everybody needed to be heard, and if you're going to err, err on the side of trying to make people understand. I guess it just sort of evolved over a period of years. The names and faces change, but I've been able at least to get people to think about the problems and see what the solutions are."

Selig does not enjoy universal acclaim. The players and their union see him as public enemy No. 1, and he has suffered losses to them. He is the man who is blamed for canceling the World Series in 1994, even though it was the players who were on strike, and just last month he was seen as the man who ended the All-Star Game in a tie, even though it was the managers who created the impossible circumstance by using all the available pitchers.

And even though Selig has presided over the creation of the wild card, expanded the playoffs, instituted interleague play, increased revenue sharing among clubs and undertaken the consolidation of the league offices, his critics still ridicule him as Bud Lite.

An Ear for the Owners

When Selig retires — his term as commissioner runs through 2006 — the owners should give him not a gold watch but a gold telephone. He is famous for his telephone time, spending, by his estimate, seven or eight hours a day on the phone speaking with owners.

"Selig is the best guy on the planet at returning phone calls," John Moores, the San Diego Padres' owner, said. "I've never known anyone to return calls as quickly as he does."

Explaining his penchant for listening, Selig said: "I thought early on in baseball there were a lot of owners who felt disenfranchised. They felt they weren't being heard. I don't know if they were right or not, but I'm very sensitive to that. It's their life, their money, their franchise. They have a right to be heard."

If there is any owner who does not feel he gets a full hearing from Selig, he has not talked about it publicly. But then no one dares to dissent because it would be futile. Selig, whom the owners rewarded with a three-year extension and a $5 million annual salary last November, has immense support in just about anything he wants to do.

"No one dares to question him," a former owner said, "because he has so much power."

[Skip]

Moved from the Todd Pratt thread.

[VNV Nation]

Deleted/moved it myself. sorry, i didn't realize i was in the thread when I posted it.

[spitball]

He's a great listener. He listens to all points of view then does what he wants.
Yeah, great listener.
I tell my cat to stop scratching on the couch. He stops for a sec, looks at me, and then gets back to scratching.
So my cat's a good listener too.

[VNV Nation]

LOL at that one.

Here's more from the article, which gets you to the crux of baseball's problems:

For years, Vincent refrained from speaking out about baseball matters in general and Selig in particular, but he has recently become Selig's severest critic.

Speaking recently of Selig's long involvement in baseball's labor battles, Vincent said: "He can't give in. We had a tough time in '90 getting him to give in. He's psychologically incapable of giving in to Fehr and making a reasonable deal."

Selig was chairman of the owners' labor relations committee in 1990, when the owners locked the players out of spring training for the first month.

"In '90," Vincent recalled, "we had a vote in my office. People were saying should we do it. I said we can't win. This was just after collusion. Half the clubs were encouraging settlement. Bud couldn't make a decision. Bud had to walk around the block. He was in a terrible bind. He couldn't give in."

[KCBOOMER]

Selig is a man of some accomplishments. Media relations with the fans is not one of them.

[VNV Nation]

I certainly don't think Selig has done a very good job in keeping the national pastime the national pastime. But the article does serve as a good reminder that he wouldn't be in the position he's and he wouldn't take the labor stances he does if he didn't have the backing of the owners.

[moose]

bud selig as commissioner is not hard to decode. he is in a position of power, trying to advance his own agenda. he has been successful at advancing his agenda.