Selig’s heart, passion always have been for the Brewers
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – One of the worst kept secrets during Bud Selig’s 22-year tenure as Commissioner of Major League Baseball was that the supposedly unbiased leader was secretly rooting for the Milwaukee Brewers. Actually, not so secretly. “He’s got a passion for this team, to the point where he showed up many times when he shouldn’t be here, hiding out upstairs (at Miller Park), to watch the club play,” said Hall of Fame radio broadcaster Bob Uecker.
“He’s a Brewer. He can talk about all his other duties and everything else but if he’s on the road someplace, he’s calling here constantly to find out what’s going on.”
Who could blame Selig for that allegiance, covert or otherwise? He founded the Brewers in 1970, leading the group that bought the Seattle Pilots out of bankruptcy. He kept the team in Milwaukee by spearheading the efforts to build Miller Park, the retractable-roof baseball palace that guaranteed the club would not leave for greener pastures, as the Braves did before them.
When Selig was enlisted by owners in 1992 to serve as interim commissioner, and six years later to assume the role on a full-time basis, he agreed to do so only if his office would remain in Milwaukee. Never mind that the office had been in New York since the original commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, ruled from Chicago.
By remaining in his hometown, Selig not only stayed in his comfort zone, it put him within shouting distance of the Brewers. In fact, he could see Miller Park from his perch high atop the U.S. Bank building (he has since moved across the street to the 833 East building on Michigan Ave.).
To be clear, Selig ruled the game in unbiased fashion, making sure not to favor the Brewers above other clubs in any rulings or initiatives. But he continued to live and die with the team’s fortunes, just not as conspicuously as he did as owner of the Brewers, when he would pace famously back and forth on the loge level during games at County Stadium.
“One of the reasons he was so effective was his heart was always with what was in the best interests of baseball, not for him personally,” said Brewers principal owner Mark Attanasio, who bought the club from the Selig group in 2005.
“Not even what was best for the Milwaukee Brewers. There were things he called me on where he would say, ‘I know this isn’t good for your club, but we have to do this for the sport.’ He really drilled that into all of us in ownership.”
Now serving a five-year term in the newly created role of commissioner emeritus, Selig can be a big more conspicuous in rooting for the Brewers. He still limits his trips to the ballpark, preferring to watch games on television at his home in Bayside, where he also can monitor other games as a devout baseball fan.
But, hardly a day goes by that Selig and Attanasio don’t talk over the telephone about the Brewers. On some days, they converse multiple times, sitting 3,000 miles apart, with Attanasio in his office in Los Angeles.
“He calls me every day about the team, even more so now that he’s not commissioner,” Attanasio said. “Bud loves ‘his’ players. He still calls them ‘his guys.’ He loves the game and he loves the players in the game. I think the players understand that.
“The team’s success this year certainly has made it more enjoyable for him. He and (wife) Sue are passionate Brewers fans.”
As it stands now, only two former players – Robin Yount (inducted in 1999) and Paul Molitor (2004) – are enshrined in the Hall of Fame representing the Brewers. A few others saw action with the club, including Hank Aaron, Rollie Fingers and Don Sutton.
When Selig is inducted Sunday, in essence, anyone ever associated with the Brewers, on and off the field, will go in with him. He is going in as an executive / commissioner, so his plaque will not depict him wearing a baseball cap. If it did, there would be no question which team emblem would be on it.
Speaking on behalf of all of the players on the Brewers’ 1982 World Series team during a 35thanniversary reunion two weeks ago at Miller Park, Yount said, “All of us are here today because of Mr. Selig. He basically created the Milwaukee Brewers. Without him, none of us would have been Brewers.”
Of all accomplishments he was credited with as commissioner – revenue sharing, labor peace, expanded playoff format, etc. – Selig never considered them as important during his career in baseball as bringing baseball back to Milwaukee after the Braves left.
Selig, who turns 83 Sunday, considers the five-year period in which he looked under every rock in search of a team the most frustrating and challenging process of his half century in the game. And he truly believes there would have been no more opportunities had the Pilots slipped through his fingers.
“We were down to the end,” Selig said wistfully. “I think if Seattle failed, it was over.”
Which begged the question: Had Selig failed to return majorleague baseball back to his hometown, what would he have done for the rest of his life?
“I really don’t know,” he said. “I never really thought about it. I had spent so much time trying to get a team. It was all I did. Just think of all the lives that were changed.”
Not the least of which was Selig’s. He reaches the pinnacle Sunday with induction into the Hall of Fame. For a career baseball man, it doesn’t get any better.