It’s Best for Selig to Step Down

Old lame joke. The therapist says to the wishy-washy patient, “Do you have trouble making up your mind?” To which the patient replies, “Well, yes and no.”

So why can’t Bud Selig just say no? How much longer will we hear his tepid and insipid non-denials that he wants to be the next permanent commissioner of baseball? If he doesn’t want the job, all he has to do is utter five simple words: “I don’t want the job.” If he wants it, all he has to say is: “Gimme.”

But he won’t.

Instead, his infernal five-year polka around the subject leaves every door and window to the commissioner’s office wide open. In September, it will have been five years since he became acting commissioner, and we still have no real idea if he wants to turn “acting” into “permanent.” Now we hear even more speculation about a movement among a cadre of owners to draft him for the job. With his good friend and supporter Paul Beeston in place as Major League Baseball’s president and chief operating officer, the likelihood that Selig would accept the commissionership, were it to be thrust upon him, seems enhanced. Certainly, Selig has turned his back on every opportunity to quash that kind of talk. He has never categorically taken himself out of consideration, and he has had countless chances.

I may be wrong here--and I hope I am--but it is entirely possible that a “Draft Selig” movement this fall, when baseball finally gets around to filling the vacancy, will be disastrously divisive. And that’s the last thing the game needs right now.

By no stretch of the imagination does Selig have unanimous support inside baseball. And by no stretch of the imagination does Selig have the unanimous support of the television partners and corporate sponsors who funnel the lion’s share of the game’s revenue into the central office in New York. Some of the opposition to a Selig candidacy, in fact, could make for a schism as volatile as anything seen during the labor eruptions of the past few years.

“I have grave concerns about the status of the game,” says one voting member of baseball’s ownership group. “Don’t misinterpret. I’m not anti-Bud, but I am pro-change. I think it’s important we get someone from outside baseball . . . someone with a clean slate. The general consensus among owners is that Bud has done a good job under difficult circumstances. More than that, an admirable job. But until we get somebody who is considered independent, someone who doesn’t have ties to our past and some of our mistakes, we will have problems. Making Bud the commissioner would just prolong that.”

During the appalling work stoppage of 1994-95, ownership did its best to strong-arm the Players Association into a new economic system, one designed to decelerate the growth of player payrolls and level the playing field for small- and middle-revenue teams. It failed, of course. Now I sense another movement afoot among some owners that seems to be gathering momentum, one that effectively would achieve some of the goals of the earlier effort by spreading the game’s wealth a little more equitably among all 30 franchises. It may be that ownership finally is willing to take a hard look at baseball’s central structure (or lack thereof) as a cause of some of the game’s ills.

Baseball is the only major professional sport that doesn’t centralize much of its money-making potential, as do the NFL, the NBA, the NHL and Major League Soccer. In many critical areas, the game essentially operates as 30 businesses rather than as a league in toto. And a growing number of owners appear to be a little more willing these days to recognize the weakness in that system.

Earlier this year, the Yankees signed a $95 million deal with Adidas. Good for the Yankees. Not so good for anybody else. Baseball is fighting it, but squelching the deal is anything but a dunk. The point is, under its current decentralized system, Major League Baseball may not have the ability to protect any sponsor who signs a leaguewide agreement, if the Yankees or any other team make individual deals with competing sponsors.

That’s one of the reasons that Nike, for instance, has yet to sign up with Major League Baseball, while it has partnership with the other major sports leagues. Say what you will about the pluses and minuses of a relationship with a 10,000-pound gorilla. The truth is, baseball could use a little Nike money.

“What it’s done is, it’s really turned off this company to baseball,” says Chris Bevilacqua, Nike’s director of cleated sports marketing. “In the longer term, a lot of money is going to be spent in soccer and rugby and women’s sports. And that’s all going to be at the expense of baseball at some point. I mean, it’s already happening. Which is too bad. It’s a shame. . . . Selig (as permanent commissioner) won’t change anything. It won’t change anything. And unless they give the power, basically, to rule baseball back to the commissioner’s office, Beeston’s position isn’t going to change anything either. Not at all.”

Bevilacqua’s last job before he joined Nike, as it happens, was director of corporate sponsorships for Major League Baseball.

We’re talking about radical overhaul of a long-standing system in baseball here, and we’re talking about undermining the clout that the large-revenue franchises currently employ and enjoy. That won’t happen gracefully. But these are desperate times, and some owners, it appears, are getting desperate enough to consider some desperate measures.

“What baseball ought to do,” San Diego Padres Owner John Moores says, “is stop and say, ‘Wait a minute now, what really works in America?’ Well, American business works pretty well. And a proper role for the ownership group ought to be to serve as a board of directors. We ought to be making policy. We ought to serve as an operating committee, which is what’s happening right now. So what I hope is that when well-qualified people are considered for the commissioner, a lot of people are going to come and say, ‘Hey, I’ll do it, but I’m no fool. I’ve run organizations before. And I’m not going to take this job without some real power. If I have to go and get the approval of eight people to change the breakfast menu, I’m not going to take this job.’ ”

If baseball comes to a Selig commissionership, it is possible he could preside over those profound changes, should they happen. The truth is, if you can plow through the muck of the work stoppage and the fundamental conflict-of-interest potential of one team’s owner presiding over 29 others, Selig has been a progressive, innovative leader for baseball in many ways. Interleague play. Six divisions and the wild-card playoffs. A radical realignment proposal that may become reality in the next month or two. Selig helped to shape all of those and more.

But status quo isn’t what baseball needs right now; and, right or wrong, status quo is what Selig represents. It will be too hard on baseball to march into the future while it’s lugging baggage from its past. Selig has the ability to lighten the load himself. He needs to realize that. He needs to make up his mind about the commissionership. He needs to just say no.

Otherwise, the joke gets worse.