The role of MLB's commissioner and the reign of Acting
Commissioner Bud Selig were profiled on HBO's "Real Sports
With Bryant Gumbel" last evening. Gumbel, introducing the
piece: "The search for a successor moves along at a
glacier's pace. As it does, the once grand old game
continues to drift." On camera, James Brown interviewed
Selig, N.Y. Times baseball writer Murray Chass, former MLB
Commissioner Peter Ueberroth and White Sox Chair Jerry
Reinsdorf in the segment entitled, "The Commish?"
THE SEARCH PROCESS: James Brown: "Bud Selig likes
committees. ... One of the most curious and slow-moving
committees that Selig has ever formed is the one charged
with finding his replacement, and it's filled with Selig's
own colleagues." Selig, on the timetable of naming a new
commissioner: "Don't know. Never put a time line on it."
Selig, asked about a perceived delay in finding a
replacement: "Frankly, there's been very little said about
that. If people feel that way, frankly I haven't heard much
of it." Brown also broached the subject of Selig's reported
$1M+ salary, adding, "In the rules and regulations of the
Major League agreement it expressly prohibits paid members
of the [MLB] Executive Council." Selig, on his salary:
"It's really not relative to anything that exists today
other than it's in recognition of a lot of work." Asked if
he would expect any controversy over being a paid member of
the Executive Council, Selig added, "Not after four and a
half or five years." Brown: "Perhaps one reason Selig
expects no controversy is that he is so adept at being vague
about what it is he really does and what his title is."
Selig, asked if he is the de facto commissioner: "I suppose
we're into semantics, but, no, I don't think so, but I can
understand how the public views it."
POWERS THAT BE: Brown chronicled the restructuring of
the power of the commissioner in '94: "What the owners
revised is the best interest of baseball clause.
Historically, that clause has been used by commissioners,
often in opposition to the owners, to act unilaterally in
almost every area of the game, including labor and revenue
sharing. The new commissioner will no longer have those
powers." But Selig responded, "People who talk about the
commissioner's office being stripped are wrong. The
commissioner has as much power as any human being I know in
this country. I can't even conceive of what people are
talking about." Selig, on whether a commissioner, under the
new agreement, will be able to invoke the best interests of
baseball clause in labor issues: "The new commissioner will
lead on our behalf, he will formulate the policy." On the
same clause being used to solve revenue sharing problems:
"That's not something any commissioner would want to do in
any sport, just unilaterally do something." Chass: "I
couldn't find any way in which the changes made the
commissioner's powers greater than they had been. He
wouldn't be able to get involved in expansion, in
interleague play, in sales of teams, his hands would be
tied, he would be powerless to block anything that the
owners wanted to do." Ueberroth: "The inmates are running
the asylum, the owners are really running the game."
GUMBEL GOES OFF: Afterward, Brown and Gumbel discussed
the segment. Brown said the owners that he spoke with gave
him a timetable of the All-Star break until the end of the
season to find a new commissioner. Gumbel, on Selig: "He
said a lot of strange things in the piece, one of them I
just had to write down, because I find it hard to believe
that he said it. His words, 'The new commissioner has as
much power as any human being in this country.' What is he?
... Is he having something funny in his brownies, or what?"
Brown: "De facto, the commissioner will not have as the same
level of power and authority as previous. No involvement in
labor negotiations, no involvement in realignment, revenue-
sharing for small-market teams, then what will the new
commissioner have in place? Ceremonial" (HBO, 5/12).
