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9 big wins for the commish

Bud Selig’s legacy is nothing if not voluminous. Over his 22 years, marking the second-longest tenure for an MLB commissioner behind Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Selig has overseen the rise of baseball from a small, regionally focused industry to a multibillion-dollar colossus that dominates every media platform and has extensions around the globe. Much like a nine-inning baseball game, Selig’s accomplishments can largely be divided into nine primary categories.

LABOR PEACE
Likely the most important of Selig’s accomplishments, finding a way to end a 30-year war with the MLB Players Association paved the way for the commissioner to get aggressive in other areas such as playoff expansion, replay and digital media. In Selig’s case, a situation that already saw seven work stoppages between 1972 and 1990, and a collusion ruling against the league, would get much worse before it got better.

The fractious environment Selig inherited in 1992 upon becoming acting commissioner soon led to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. But after peace was found the following year, in part due to a court ruling by now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, MLB will continue without a work stoppage through at least 2016. A key element for Selig was discarding any pretense of the commissioner’s role as some sort of neutral overseer of the game and acknowledging to the players what he really was: management’s top representative.

ECONOMIC REFORM

Economic reforms have helped teams like the Kansas City Royals stay competitive.
Photo by: Getty Images

Selig often likes to tell the story of a disastrous set of owners meetings in 1993 in Kohler, Wis., where big-market clubs and small-market clubs clashed over revenue-sharing provisions. The situation was so fractious that baseball’s intra-management arguments were often much more heated and contentious than anything happening at the time with the players union. For much of the 1990s and early 2000s, high-revenue teams such as the New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves dominated the on- and off-field competitive landscape, leaving teams at the other end of the scale such
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SBJ Podcast:
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as the Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates with little to no hope.

Fast-forward to today, and the Royals are defending American League champions, the Pirates have reached the playoffs the last two years, MLB revenue-sharing annually reaches well into nine figures, and since 2001, only the Toronto Blue Jays have failed to reach the postseason. Selig calls baseball’s economic reformation the favorite of his accomplishments.

FRANCHISE VALUES
Another common Selig chestnut is how he told team owners in the late ’90s to “judge me on your asset values.”
And in that one metric, which encapsulates soaring media rights, facility development and overall revenue growth, one can easily see the historic change across the industry.

Selig bought his own team, the Milwaukee Brewers, out of bankruptcy in 1970 for $10.8 million. The Los Angeles Dodgers sold in 2012 for $2.15 billion, a difference of more than 19,000 percent. Most other MLB teams, if for sale, would now require at least $1 billion to buy. Nearly every MLB franchise has been sold at least once during the Selig era, and a few such as the Dodgers and San Diego Padres have flipped multiple times. In virtually every instance, the outgoing owner has left a far wealthier man than when he entered baseball.

The Miami Marlins are the latest club to open a new stadium during Selig’s tenure.
Photo by: Getty Images
STADIUM DEVELOPMENT
Baseball’s building boom technically began before Selig became commissioner, as Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, the now-U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, and the then-SkyDome in Toronto had opened between 1989 and 1992. But since Selig’s ascension in September 1992, 24 MLB ballparks have either been built or received substantial renovations. Many of those projects, including Miller Park in Selig’s Milwaukee, required significant political maneuvering in order to happen.

The broad shift from bland, multipurpose facilities often shared with football teams to baseball-only venues, each with its own individual quirks and often borrowing design cues from the sport’s history, has transformed how the game is played and what fans expect out of their ballpark experience.


MLB ADVANCED MEDIA
Selig does not use a computer, takes pride in the fact he has never sent an email, and only somewhat recently has embraced using a smartphone and tablet. But he nonetheless gave rise to MLBAM, one of the great success stories in recent American business history.

Devised in part as a means to create more equally shared national revenue for clubs, MLBAM has become an innovator on everything from streaming media and mobile application development to multiple elements of the in-stadium fan experience. MLBAM’s success has been so pervasive that a fast-growing group of outside media entities such as ESPN, HBO, Sony and Turner Sports rely on baseball to aid their own digital video strategies.
MLBAM’s success also influenced the arrival of another league-owned media vehicle, MLB Network, in 2009.

PLAYOFF EXPANSION
When Selig became commissioner, he inherited a division format in use since 1969 and essentially unchanged in the quarter-century since: two divisions in each league, with a league championship series that preceded the World Series. Selig led the introduction of a wild card in 1994 that due to the work stoppage would not be implemented until the following year.

Purists, among them some team owners, initially howled at the firm break with tradition. But the change boosted on-field competitive dynamics significantly, and helped fuel a record-breaking run of attendance growth across the league. So successful was the first wild card that a second one was added in 2012 with barely any dissension. The creation of the wild card arrived in combination with a new three-division format in each league that was further tweaked in 2013 with the shift of the Houston Astros to the American League.

NEW FRANCHISES
Because only one baseball team — the Washington Nationals — has been a product of relocation since 1971, this area doesn’t get as much regard as some of Selig’s other accomplishments. But Selig also oversaw two rounds of expansion in the 1990s that brought new teams to Denver, Miami, Phoenix and St. Petersburg, Fla.

The on-field results for baseball’s four newest teams have been mixed, and former MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent has frequently claimed that the first expansion round was done to offset owner collusion penalties from the 1980s.
But those four franchises share three World Series titles and five pennants between them. And those four areas each rank among the top 20 Nielsen media markets in the U.S., a key element as MLB has successfully closed multiple rounds of record national media rights deals under Selig.

DRUG REFORM
Likely the toughest journey for Selig compared to any other topic, baseball was long pilloried for its perceived slowness to act against performance-enhancing drugs, and again more recently for allegedly heavy-handed investigative tactics in the Biogenesis case. The infamous St. Patrick’s Day 2005 congressional hearing, in which Selig received an all-day lambasting from lawmakers, ranks with the cancellation of the 1994 World Series and the 2002 All-Star Game tie as one of his darkest days in office.

When Selig began his run as commissioner, there was no comprehensive drug testing of any kind within the sport.
He leaves with a robust program that includes random blood testing for human growth hormone, profiling for player testosterone levels, drug testing throughout the minor leagues, and perhaps most critically, a reformed culture in which players are now vocally asking for more stringent guidelines instead of fighting every new proposal.

INSTANT REPLAY

Last season saw the introduction of a new instant-replay system.
Photo by: Getty Images

MLB and Selig were slow to act here, but when they finally moved, they did so quite forcefully. Last season saw the introduction of a vast new instant-replay system in which virtually every play on the field except for ball-strike calls were subject to video reviews. Initiated primarily by manager challenges and handled operationally out of MLBAM offices, the expanded instant-replay system performed with minimal hiccups and has largely killed off the Don Denkinger-type umpire gaffes that can turn entire seasons.

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