Menu
Download the app

SBJ subscribers – Enhance your experience with the revamped iOS app

Sports Business Awards

As commish, Selig understood owners’ issues, challenges

During a wide-ranging interview a couple of months before his final day as commissioner, Bud Selig reflected on his 22 years in the office compared to his expectations going in.

Shown in 1998, Selig says, “I appreciated what you go through as an owner.”
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
“You want me to give you a really candid answer?” Selig asked. “I didn’t have a clue what this job was. I thought I did. My daughter Wendy has a great line when she talks about baseball. She says, ‘They don’t even know what they didn’t know.’ I thought I did. But when you finally get the job yourself …

“We were in the midst of, well, if it wasn’t anarchy, it was the beginning of an internal revolution. So, I was stunned in ’92, ’3, ’4 and ’5. I thought I knew. But then I began to work my way through things and get a sense for what we had to do. And it became a step here and a step there. Well planned, but always trying to prove to people that we needed to do things differently and we needed to do them together. A very simple thing, but true.

“If they said no, it was they had a set of problems I had to work with. … So I’d work my way through it with them, a lot of times one by one. That’s why it takes a long time.”

Selig told a story about a time when his Brewers were playing the Chicago White Sox while then-Commissioner Peter Ueberroth was visiting. The morning had brought alternating rain showers and snow flurries. Ueberroth, who spent most of his life in California, assumed they would postpone the game.

“Peter, it may be like this for 30 days,” Selig told Ueberroth. “We’re going to play.”

“Yeah,” White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf concurred, “we can play.”

“The Brewers won, I’m happy to say,” Selig said, reflecting on that April day, which was like many he and Reinsdorf lived through as operators of clubs in cold-weather cities. “It rained and snowed the whole game, but those were great lessons for me when I [became commissioner], because I appreciated what you go through as an owner. So when a guy starts talking to you about his franchise, you understand — no matter who they are.”

More than a year after stepping away, Selig still points back to that connection — former club owner as commissioner — as the impetus for both the course he charted and the success he achieved as commissioner.

— Bill King

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/05/16/Sports-Business-Awards/Selig-owners.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/05/16/Sports-Business-Awards/Selig-owners.aspx

CLOSE