Former commissioner’s legacy will be labor peace
Bud Selig, who evolved from a young, avid fan to founding owner of the Milwaukee Brewers to consensusbuilding commissioner, reached the pinnacle of the game Sunday.
Selig was elected for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., by the newly created Today’s Game Era Committee on the eve of the annual winter meetings.
Also elected: baseball executive John Schuerholz, who guided the Kansas City Royals to their first World Series crown in 1985 and later won another title with the Atlanta B raves while leading the franchise to 14 division titles and five pennants.
“It’s easy to build a championship team but very difficult and challenging to sustain it,” Schuerholz said. “It’s hard to say one trumps another. I’m proud of what we did in Kansas City and Atlanta, overcoming the challenges we had and being successful and winning consistently.”
Selig received a call about his election from Hall of Fame Chairwoman Jane Forbes Clark.
“I’m honored, thrilled and deeply grateful,” Selig said. “This has been a marvelous career, and this is the highlight of it. Who could have imagined this?”
Selig and Schuerholz will be inducted in Cooperstown on July 30, 2017, along with any former players elected by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, to be announced Jan. 18.
Selig, 82, was elected in his first time on the ballot of the Today’s Game Era Committee, which considered former executives, players, managers and umpires with at least 10 years of service whose contributions came primarily from 1988 to the present.
Candidates needed 75% of the votes cast for election, meaning 12 of 16 committee members. Selig easily surpassed that level with 15 votes. Schuerholz was a unanimous pick but no other candidate received more than seven votes.
Selig is the fifth former commissioner to be elected to the Hall of Fame and the first living one since Happy Chandler in 1982.
Selig’s Hall of Fame candidacy centered on his role as the game’s ninth commissioner, a job he took on an interim basis in 1992 and then full-time six years later. The early years were tough, including a bitter labor war that led to cancellation of the 1994 World Series.
There also was the Steroid Era in which players cheated the system with use of performanceenhancing drugs, skewing the game’s records and statistics.
With doggedness and an ability to build consensus among oncedivided team owners, Selig moved baseball out of the work-stoppage wilderness by bridging labor gaps between management and players. Though criticized for being slow to act, he helped achieve the most comprehensive drug-testing policy in professional sports.
“Sometimes in life, you have to go through certain things to solve the problem,” Selig said. “(Cancel- ing the 1994 Series) broke my heart. ... The same thing with the steroid thing. Yes, it was painful and had its ups and downs. But we solved that problem. It took awhile for a lot of reasons, but the fact of the matter is we solved it.”
Achieving labor peace and imposing significant penalties for using performance-enhancing drugs allowed innovations enacted under Selig to take full effect, including increased revenue sharing, expanded playoffs including wild-card berths, interleague play, realignment, the World Baseball Classic, instant replay, 22 new ballparks, competitive balance and vast economic growth, including the game’s ultra-prosperous online wing
known as MLB Advanced Media.
Selig also took the lead in many social issues, including permanently retiring No. 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier.
Ending the long-running labor feud remains Selig’s primary legacy. It was only fitting that his Hall of Fame election came four days after the players union and management went down to the wire to reach agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement.
“This was a sport that was resistant to change,” he said. “We were living with a system that was archaic. We’ve come a long way, and I’m really proud of that.”
Haudricourt writes for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network.