MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL: THE LOCKOUT AFTERMATH : Milwaukee Owner Is Everyone’s Bud : Negotiations: Considered an upstart 25 years ago, Selig is now one of baseball’s most powerful men and had a key role in settling the lockout.

Twenty-five years ago, Allan (Bud) Selig was a young upstart with a pipe dream of reviving major league baseball in Milwaukee.

The Milwaukee Braves were starting their lame-duck 1965 season before fleeing to Atlanta, and Selig was determined to land an expansion franchise to replace them. He made such a weak impression on the baseball owners that when they expanded for the 1969 season, both leagues turned him down.

This is the same Bud Selig, now 55, who serves as chairman of the owners’ Player Relations Committee and was in the forefront of the negotiations that finally ended the baseball lockout Sunday night.

From the position of a rank outsider whom the lords of baseball found it easy to shove aside, Selig has become one of the most powerful and respected owners in the business.

The turnaround began when, thanks to Selig, Milwaukee finally got another team in 1970. The Seattle Pilots went bankrupt after one season, and Selig led the group that bought their franchise for $11 million. They became the Milwaukee Brewers, with Selig their president and chief executive officer.

By that time, Selig had turned a few heads among his peers, if only for his remarkable tenacity. Then, as time passed and his down-to-earth leadership qualities came to the surface, the other owners began turning to him in matters of importance.

Positions on prestigious baseball committees usually are passed around, but Selig turned up on an uncommon number of them. He made his debut with the Major League Promotion Corp., then was named to the American League Long-Range Planning Committee, the Major League Baseball Franchise Committee and the Baseball Hall of Fame Committee.

When the time came to pick a baseball commissioner to succeed Bowie Kuhn, Selig was appointed chairman of the Search Committee. His choice for commissioner was Peter Ueberroth, even before Ueberroth had established himself as a big success as president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the Summer Games in 1984. When Ueberroth fared well, Selig’s popularity in owners’ circles hit a new high.

Selig then backed A. Bartlett Giamatti to follow Ueberroth, and Fay Vincent to take over after Giamatti’s death last summer. Vincent also played a prominent role in settling the dispute with the players’ union that postponed spring training until today.

And even that isn’t the extent of the tireless Selig’s committee work. He has been a member of the Major League Executive Council for some time, and now, since Sunday’s agreement with the players, has been named to a study commission to determine the course baseball should take in the ‘90s.

As Selig has said on many occasions, “I guess I don’t know how to say no.”

Selig was a happy man Monday when he was reached by telephone after returning to Milwaukee.

“Everybody seems overjoyed that we’ll have baseball again,” he said. “When I got off the plane (in Milwaukee), people applauded. It was 5 o’clock in the afternoon, so there were a lot of people there. I got chills when I heard the applause, and I thanked the people in person and in TV interviews.”

Asked for his reaction to the settlement, Selig said, “I’m very tired after not sleeping much for four weeks, but I feel good about things. I think we have established better and more reasonable order in the conduct of baseball.

“There has been a long history of acrimony between players and management, but I think that has been reduced to a great extent. We have achieved an agreement without altering arbitration, which is very important.

“We were castigated for imposing the lockout, but now it has served its purpose. By doing what we did, we avoided a strike during the season.”

Selig recalled the 50-day strike that wiped out 713 games in 1981 and made a virtual mockery of the season.

“In my 21 years in baseball, nothing has been sadder to me than what happened in ‘81,” he said.

Selig was a student and later a businessman, not a baseball man, when the Braves played in Milwaukee from 1953 through 1965. He operated an automobile dealership, which he sold only recently, although he still owns a car-leasing business.

Baseball was Selig’s first love, however, and when the Braves deserted Milwaukee, he organized Teams Inc., later to be renamed Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club Inc. He and the other members of his group met one roadblock after another, but he refused to buckle.

Ben Barkin, a Milwaukee public relations executive and a part owner of the Brewers, was one of Selig’s key colleagues in venture.

Barkin estimated that the franchise was now worth more than $100 million.

“But don’t worry,” Barkin said. “It’s not going to be sold.”

After the Brewers had won their only American League pennant in 1982, Selig looked back to the days and years when his cause seemed hopeless.

“All this from a little dream 18 years ago,” he said. “When I think back to what we went through in our efforts to get a team for Milwaukee, I can’t believe this has all happened.

“Those five agonizing years were the low point of my life. Everywhere we went to present our case, we were treated like outcasts.

“We finally got the White Sox for 10 games a year, and it looked like that was going to be it. But now we’ve come all the way.”

Asked when he felt he was gaining prestige among the owners, Selig said, “I’d say in the mid-’70s. I had a tremendous amount of help from John Fetzer, who owned the Tigers. He was my mentor. He guided me from 1970 on. He’s a marvelous human being.”

Besides ranking high in the eyes of other owners, Selig commands great respect from his players.

Selig’s rapport with his players was put to its severest test during the recent lockout. Since Brewer third baseman Paul Molitor was the American League player representative, he and Selig were actively engaged on opposing sides.

The situation could have been touchy, but Molitor said before the agreement was reached, “Whatever happens won’t affect my feelings toward Bud Selig. I’ll always have the greatest respect for him.”