The 20 most influential people in professional Baseball

1. Bud Selig
Commissioner, MLB
After scrambling from crisis to crisis during most of his early years running the sport, Selig now operates from a position of pure strength. He is beloved by owners and immensely skilled in building consensus. Critics must admit baseball’s runaway growth in revenue and relevance during the last several years has occurred on Selig’s watch. Easily the most influential commissioner in the history of the game, Selig’s victories in the past year creating the World Baseball Classic and a new steroid testing agreement only cement his legacy. There’s no time to relax, however, as Selig now must decide what to do about new accusations of steroid use by Barry Bonds.

2. Bob DuPuy
President, COO, MLB
Almost nothing of importance gets done at MLB without the direct involvement of DuPuy, making him the game’s ultimate insider. While seamlessly shifting from local stadium deals to labor relations to national TV contracts, DuPuy’s skill, tenacity and charm have positioned him as an indispensable ally of Commissioner Bud Selig and the owners. A relentless problem solver, DuPuy remains unflappable in the heat of battle. Beyond navigating MLB’s internal and domestic issues, DuPuy is also MLB’s point man in an attempt to reinstate baseball as an Olympic sport.

3. Donald Fehr
Executive director, MLBPA
Recent years have not been kind to Fehr, with the players union leader being repeatedly grilled by Congress over steroid use in the game, owners winning significant economic concessions in the labor arena, and Fehr’s predecessor, Marvin Miller, carping about the players making two new deals last year on steroid testing. But after years of battling with MLB management, Fehr has finally conditioned the owners to respect him and his membership, and pursue true partnerships with the players, foremost embodied by the creation of a jointly owned company with MLB to operate the World Baseball Classic.

4. George Bodenheimer
President, ESPN/ABC Sports
ESPN was close to having a new TV deal with MLB for nearly a year before finally pulling the trigger last summer, increasing its offer to about $300 million a year at the last second to fend off a competitive bid from Comcast and OLN. ESPN also did a separate, $30 million-a-year deal with MLB Advanced Media, and committed an additional $11 million a season for the league’s radio rights, indicating a true belief in baseball at every level. Transactions of that magnitude don’t happen without the boss’s personal involvement and support, so there’s no one individually pouring more money into MLB than ESPN’s affable president.

5. Jerry Reinsdorf
Chairman, Chicago White Sox
With a new World Series ring, a seat on every relevant MLB committee and the ear of Commissioner Bud Selig, there is no doubt Reinsdorf is baseball’s most powerful team owner. Last fall’s championship run showed a softer, more sentimental side to Reinsdorf, but as Washington, D.C., officials can attest, he remains as tough and hard-driving as owners come. As Selig has asserted himself more forcefully in recent years, Reinsdorf is no longer seen as simply the commissioner’s puppeteer, but that doesn’t suggest any loss of power on his part. Next up is using Chicago’s title to prop up his economically underperforming franchise.

6. George Steinbrenner
Owner, New York Yankees
Steinbrenner didn’t win any friends among MLB management by speaking out harshly and often against the World Baseball Classic. But his New York Yankees remain by far the game’s leading economic force, and his long-held concerns over the proper use of MLB revenue-sharing money are now being shared by some other big-market clubs, setting up a decisive debate to come this summer. Last fall the Boss showed new and historic levels of restraint by agreeing to change his behavior and front-office structure in order to retain general manager Brian Cashman and manager Joe Torre.

7. Tony Ponturo
VP, global media, sports marketing, Anheuser-Busch
Beer and baseball are as inseparable as balls and strikes, so it’s easy to make the case that suds are an endemic category. Since Anheuser-Busch controls more diamonds than any other brand, it follows that the King of Beers is also the king of baseball and Ponturo carries more weight in Major League Baseball circles than a member of the 500 HR club. With the top two domestic beer brands in Bud Light and Bud, Ponturo has more clout within the game than anyone this side of Aaron and Ruth.

8. Scott Boras
CEO, The Scott Boras Corp.
Regarded as the most powerful individual agent in any single, major American sport, Boras earned his place atop the industry through a career’s worth of market-moving contracts for baseball players. His current client list includes Carlos Beltran, Adrian Beltre, Johnny Damon, Jason Varitek, Mark Teixeira, Magglio Ordonez and Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez’s $252 million deal in 2000 with the Texas Rangers holds the record for the largest single deal for any individual athlete. But the blockbuster deals tell only part of the story of Boras, who is widely credited for revolutionizing the amateur draft by giving entrants greater economic leverage.

9. Gene Orza
COO, MLBPA
Much is the same and much is different about Orza, long the No. 2 man for the players union. One of the smartest people in nearly every room he enters, Orza remains an indefatigable advocate for the players he represents. But Orza is no longer in near-constant war with MLB management. Rather, he served as a key figure with MLB’s Paul Archey to create World Baseball Classic Inc., the jointly owned company that staged the successful international tournament. It’s obvious something’s changed when the typically hard-charging Orza went to overarching lengths to describe the WBC as “fun.”

10. John Henry
Principal owner, Boston Red Sox
Henry took a major hit in gravitas during last fall’s Theo Epstein saga, particularly when he said at one emotional point, “I have to ask myself, maybe I’m not fit to be the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox.” Henry has also displayed a somewhat curious 180-degree turn on revenue sharing. But the Red Sox, under Henry and team president and CEO Larry Lucchino, remain the only club able to travel in remotely the same economic circles as the Yankees. And his work in updating Fenway Park and extracting more revenue out of the tiny, 96-year-old facility is nothing short of masterful.

11. Tim Brosnan
Executive VP, business, MLB
Tough, opinionated and not without his detractors, Brosnan remains a key rainmaker in baseball’s inner circle. All business operations with the exception of MLB Advanced Media report to him, and all sectors under him, particularly corporate sponsorship and merchandising, stand at or near all-time highs with the power of the MLB brand continuing to surge upward. Brosnan is at once a demanding taskmaster and an executive who has allowed the vice presidents under him to become industry stars in their own right.

12. Bob Bowman
President, MLBAM
Bowman didn’t create MLB Advanced Media — he was hired several months after it was formed. But he turned the company into what it has become: an incredibly fast-growing source of entirely new money for baseball, and a trailblazer in delivering real-time content. Some clients and co-workers have yet to adjust to Bowman’s hard-edged, aggressive personality, but owners love what Bowman has done for their wallets and their images. By creating that new pot of gold that is shared equally, Bowman also represents something of a de facto peacemaker among the owners.

13. Ed Goren
President, Fox Sports
Although Fox’s future with MLB is unclear (its rights deal expires at the end of this season), Goren has left his imprint on the game through innovative production and aggressive needling of the commissioner. It was Goren and Fox who championed the play-for-home-field-advantage format of the All-Star Game, and Goren was Bud Selig’s sharpest critic after the tie All-Star Game fiasco. Innovations such as the catcher-cam and microphones in the bases also glisten with Goren’s fingerprints. Although his title is president, Goren is a producer at heart, and his greatest contribution to baseball is through Fox’s creative presentation of games.

14. Rob Manfred
Executive VP, labor relations, MLB
Commissioner Bud Selig gets much of the credit for twice boosting MLB’s steroid testing program in 2005, but it was Manfred in the trenches negotiating most of the key points of the deals, just as he’s done on the collective-bargaining front and will do so again this summer pursuing a new labor deal. His development of better relations with union leaders Donald Fehr, Gene Orza and Michael Weiner represents a key underpinning of the sport’s generally improved labor climate. Manfred is also baseball’s frontline soldier in a continued battle over steroid testing with the World Anti-Doping Agency.

15. Hugh Panero
CEO, XM Satellite Radio
When Panero’s XM radio spent $650 million for rights to every MLB game on satellite radio, he ushered in the era of MLB clubs earning serious cash from new media platforms. All the leagues have satellite radio deals, but MLB’s is the largest from a revenue standpoint, and considered the truly groundbreaking agreement in the burgeoning satellite space. Willing to spend against those rights, XM gave away coupons for free satellite radios to everyone in attendance at the first game of last year’s World Series.

16. U.S. Sen. John McCain
Arizona Republican
McCain’s power within baseball now sits on simmer, rather than a full boil, but MLB knows it cannot shake the Arizona senator as a vigilant watchdog over the sport. It’s entirely possible that MLB and the players union would have eventually made a second revision to the steroid testing program on their own through collective bargaining, but we’ll never really know. It was the congressional pressure led by McCain and others that provided the necessary grease to get the three-strikes-and-you’re-out policy on paper and ratified by labor and management. If Congress elects to enter the Barry Bonds debate, McCain will be leading the charge.

17. Drayton McLane
Owner, Houston Astros
One of Commissioner Bud Selig’s closest confidantes, McLane holds a unique perspective among owners. Representing baseball’s middle class, an aggressive marketer within his own market and a league-first executive, McLane is well-respected by fellow owners both above and below him in the sport’s economic pecking order. Even-keeled yet decisive, McLane is an important voice on several MLB committees. And, his insurance dispute with Jeff Bagwell aside, McLane is also one of the game’s most popular owners among his players.

18. Bob Thompson
President, Fox Sports Networks
On what network do people watch more baseball than anywhere else? If you said Fox, you’d be half right. Fox Sports Net, now branded FSN, televises 2,500 MLB games a year, through regional deals with 21 MLB clubs. It lost the valued Cleveland Indians this year, but renewed with the Marlins and re-upped with the Dodgers, Twins, Astros and Rockies in 2004. Thompson, as president of Fox Sports Networks, is involved with all the team deals and also is FSN’s primary contact at the league level. Also an influential voice is Fox Sports Networks COO Randy Freer, who runs operations for all the regionals and is increasingly more involved in negotiating team rights contracts.

19. Fred Wilpon
Owner, New York Mets
Long New York’s “other” team, the Mets under Wilpon are now on a sharp upward trajectory and are poised to challenge the Yankees fully for dominance of the city’s baseball hearts and newspaper back pages. The club’s new regional sports network, SportsNet New York, begins this spring, as does work on a new ballpark to be built adjacent to Shea Stadium. Content to work much more quietly and behind the scenes than his crosstown counterpart, Wilpon nonetheless stands as one of a handful of MLB owners who hold the ear of Commissioner Bud Selig.

20. Chris Koch
CEO, New Era
Koch is the fourth generation to run the cap business started in upstate New York 86 years ago. Lately, a combination of Major League Baseball’s exploding popularity and New Era’s increasing fashion sense has spurred sales of so many caps that MLB headwear revenue now outpaces the rest of MLB licensed apparel for the first time. Outside of broadcasters, no one is paying more fees to MLB than New Era — pretty heady company for a fourth-generation cap maker. With those kinds of numbers, we’re wondering how long New Era will stay a family-owned business.