Seventeen years into his reign as commissioner, Bud Selig still hasn’t found a way to sell himself to the public. When a tough decision was needed at the 2002 All-Star Game (in the House That Selig Built, no less), Bud shrugged his shoulders and walked off. He was the man who had to tell a generation of baseball fans that there would be no World Series for the first time in ninety years. He publicly lobbied for the elimination of two franchises, and called a successful small market team an “aberration.” And most recently, he has beaten a dead horse back to life, telling anybody who will listen that it was the players union, not him, that allowed steroid use to proliferate.
Bud is certainly not the prototypical Landis-like commissioner; he is the protector of the owners, not the game itself. He doesn’t have Landis’s presence, or Bart Giamatti’s public stature. Forty years after his car leasing fortune allowed him to buy his way into baseball, Bud still looks like a used-car salesman. As a public figure, it probably hurts him; in not being able to sell himself, he’s also failed to sell many of his policies and positions to MLB’s paying customers.
But there’s another side to this story. Bud has done certain things extraordinarily well, including some that his predecessors failed to do. He is the first commissioner in the post-Miller era to truly unify the owners in regard to labor issues-the last two CBAs were the first ever to be signed without a work stoppage, and were generally more favorable to management than previous agreements. Bowie Kuhn and Peter Ueberroth were no less hostile to the union, but they were never able to get their own side in order (at least not legally).
Selig has also never shied away from making major changes to the game’s core systems. Whereas Giamatti and Fay Vincent were seen as “purists” who seemed to put baseball’s tradition above all else, and Bowie Kuhn simply wasn’t a businessman, Bud has led one of baseball’s most transformative eras. Adding the wild card to the post-season picture has given a significant boost to league-wide attendance, particularly during August and September. MLB Advanced Media has been a tremendous financial success, and it gives baseball a big head start toward an even more lucrative digital future. Bud was also front and center in building MLB’s cable network (which launched to more homes than any other network in history), and has overseen the sport’s greatest stadium boom. While interleague play has a more mixed record, it still took some serious chutzpah and diplomatic skill to finally implement, a trait that previous commissioners (aside from Ueberroth) sorely lacked.
All things considered, how does Bud’s record stand relative to past commissioners from a business perspective? The table below shows MLB’s inflation-adjusted revenue growth (MLB+) during each commissioner’s tenure, as well as the the corresponding growth rate in US Real GDP (GDP+). The last column is MLB Growth/GDP Growth (MLB+/GDP+)-in other words, how well did that commissioner do relative to the rest of the country:
Commissioner Term Years GDP+ MLB+ +/Year MLB+/GDP+ Landis 1920-1944 16 108.80% 59.46% 3.72% 0.55 Chandler 1945-1951 7 6.01% -6.95% -0.99% -1.16 Frick/Eckert 1952-1968 17 90.74% 143.90% 10.28% 1.59 Kuhn 1969-1984 16 59.16% 50.28% 3.14% 0.85 Ueberroth 1985-1988 4 15.98% 44.82% 11.20% 2.80 Giamatti 1989-1989 1 3.54% 17.54% 17.54% 4.95 Vincent 1990-1992 3 5.09% 12.86% 4.29% 2.53 Selig 1993-2008 16 58.83% 143.40% 8.96% 2.44
A couple of notes: the MLB financial data only goes back to 1929, so Landis’s first few years on the job aren’t counted (which is why it says 16 years, instead of 25). Also, the data for the mid-’60s is very weak, so I’ve combined Frick’s and Eckert’s tenures; if I had to guess, this probably hurts Frick a bit, but not by all that much.
Aside from Giamatti (who passed away during the first year of his term), Selig, Ueberroth, and Vincent were the only three commissioners to double the pace of US GDP. That shouldn’t be all that surprising; all three had business backgrounds, whereas Landis was a judge, Frick was a writer, Eckert was an Air Force general, and Kuhn was a lawyer. In contrast, Vincent had been a top-level executive at both Coca-Cola and Columbia Pictures before becoming deputy commissioner under Giamatti, and Ueberroth started his own travel company in the 1960s, and ran the highly successful 1984 Olympics. But politics did them both in after just three and four years on the job, respectively. Neither was able to simultaneously appease all of the owners’ separate interests at once, a task that Selig has consistently excelled at.
It is from among the long-term commissioners (Landis, Frick, and Kuhn, none of whom were overly creative) that Bud really separates himself. Landis and Kuhn failed to even match the US economy; Frick did a bit better, buoyed by television, several team relocations into more lucrative markets, and expansion. But Frick had to be dragged kicking and screaming into those changes, particularly the latter. Bud has not only accepted change, he’s actively embraced and encouraged it.
What’s most amazing about Bud’s tenure is that no other commissioner, short- or long-term, has had Bud’s massive pitfalls. Kuhn, Ueberroth, and Vincent had to deal with work stoppages, but none of them lost a World Series to one. Ueberroth had to deal with a drug scandal during his reign, but it involved recreational drugs, not so-called performance enhancers. And Landis never suggested that teams should be contracted, despite having to steward the game through the Great Depression. That Bud has been so successful despite all of his missteps is a major point in favor of business sense over political savvy.
This should probably be a lesson for MLB’s owners when the time comes to pick a new boss; Bud is almost 75, after all. Selig has happily taken the role of MLB’s CEO, which is more or less what the position has called for since Happy Chandler was dumped in favor of Ford Frick in 1951. But the public’s ideal commissioner still seems to be someone like Landis, someone who will rule with an iron fist and “protect” the game. If the owners are smart, they’ll look past such sentiments and go fo for someone more like Bud.
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This is the Selig legacy, in my mind - 10 years of baseball, with some important records being set, all tarnished. Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire happened on HIS watch. Roger Clemens, possibly the greatest pitcher the game has seen, is marred by scandal. This is the game - long term, what makes baseball great is the legends, the players. it is a game in our soul, in the poetry of the nation, and under bud's watch, the game was damaged, probably more than it has been since the 1919 Black Sox.
Of course, baseball will recover - it always does.
he's not a bug, he's a feature!
But he's damaged the game. The unbalanced schedule is appallingly unfair, and it affects not only the wild card but also the draft.
And he's handled the steroid issue terribly, keeping it in the public eye to use as a tool against the union (I argued that the union should have done the same thing in 2003, but they backed down because they lacked Selig's congressional lobby).
And it's probably more accurate to say Selig's kept his job because the owners have been mostly on the same page for the past 16 years, instead of crediting Selig for keeping them together with a combination of Solomon's wisdom and Nestor's tongue (neither of which has ever been publicly displayed).
Selig has gone out of his way to trash everything about baseball except the owners whose interests he serves to the exclusion of all else. His legacy is that the owners' wallets come first, and the game can go to hell if it gets in the way.
The sooner Selig's gone, the better.
But it is natural for us in the US to be absolutely MLBcentric
Great for MLB, not as optimal for spreading and growing the game around the world.
I noticed a small calculation error, I think.
If I'm understanding your table correctly, the +/Year for Frick/Eckert should be:
143.9% / 17 yrs = 8.46%, not 10.28%
National TV contract values for all sports have exploded during Selig's tenure thanks to expanded distribution and competition. Combine that with the rise of regional cable deals and it seems that exploiting new revenue streams would make it easier for MLB to outpace GDP growth but not necessarily the NFL/NBA.
I think it's obvious Bud has been good for the game's bottom line. One thing you could have added was his success in helping teams obtain substantial public funding for new stadiums. Those things are cash cows for the game.
From a fan's and taxpayer's perspective, I do not care for Selig. His work has made the game less enjoyable for people like me, but you have to admit he has helped make a lot of people very rich.
STEROIDS - go ahead and complain about the PA, Bud, but don't act like they had you by the balls. If you paint the PA as pro-steroids, as the only hurdle to comprehensive testing, they won't get very far in the court of public opinion. If Selig had called a press conference in the mid-90s and publicly demanded that the PA submit to immediate olympic-style testing, the PA would have caved. Maybe not immediately, but he had the moral high ground and an unequivocal public. He could have at least given testing a patina of inevitably that would have undoubtedly discouraged a lot of cheaters, and parlayed that into a testing system.
MLB NETWORK - gee whiz, you finally rolled it out like two years after NFL managed to? Congrats. How many points awarded for 'better late than never'?
PETER ANGELOS - you're really going to bribe this clown so that you can put an orphan club in the most obvious destination?
WASHINGTON NATIONALS - and then you're going to let the DC council jerk you around?
FLORIDA MARLINS - the yearly talent liquidations are disgusting. find a real owner.
DIVISION ASYMMETRY - there's no way to slice it so we have 5 teams in each division?
08 WS GAME 5 - disaster averted somehow, despite the Bud-bungling that everybody knew was going to happen.
ALL STAR GAMES - if you're going to make them count (which admittedly I like), find a way to make them end after nine innings.
and continuing on the Marlisn and Nationals front, Selig really has screwed over the poorer franchises. if it weren't for the genius of GMs like Beane, Beinfest, Huntington, etc..... Selig seems to love having big shot teams do well because they drag in all the money
and not being a nationals fan, even i think Selig played a huge part in screweing over the Expo fans and screwing that franchise even to this day
That being said, I wouldn't give him, or the post-Kuhn commissioners, too much credit. for the increased revenue I think the additional revenue is related to the development of cable tv (and cable tv sports channels like ESPN, Fox Sports, etc). All those extra advertising dollars probably make the difference for MLB's revenue growth.
Personally, I can't see him being that hard to replace.
Selig has done a very good job growing baseball. One just had to witness and acknowledge the rise and fall of the NBA during Selig's tenure. When was the last time the NBA was relevant? Don't get me started on the NHL, is that still functioning?
Finally, MLB is set to surpass the NFL in terms of revenue in the coming year. So for all of you NFL fanboy's get lost.