​Full circle

Former commissioner Bud Selig returns to his alma mater to teach

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While a student at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1950s, Allan H. Selig — better known as “Bud” — wanted to teach history. After a detour spanning some 60 years, he is now doing just that.

Selig, the former Major League Baseball commissioner, is back on campus teaching a senior seminar history course called “Baseball and American Society Since World War II.” For much of that era, he’s had a dugout seat.

“I went into the Army after graduating in 1956,” Selig, 81, says from his busy office nestled in a corner of the fifth floor of the Humanities Building. “But I remember saying to Herb Kohl [Selig’s childhood neighbor and college roommate, and a former U.S. senator], ‘I’m going to come back here.’”

Selig graduated from Wisconsin with a double major in American history and political science, served two years in the military and moved back to his hometown of Milwaukee to enter the car-leasing business with his father.

But his path veered, once again, and he will forever be remembered as the man who brought the Seattle Pilots, renamed the Milwaukee Brewers, to a city still bitter about the Braves’ abandonment for Atlanta following the 1965 season. Previously a Braves stockholder, Selig established an organization with several local business leaders, and on April 1, 1970, a Seattle bankruptcy court awarded the Pilots franchise to Selig and his investors for about $10 million.

Selig transferred ownership of the club in 1992 to his daughter, Wendy Selig-Prieb. Mark Attanasio purchased it from the Selig family for $200 million in 2005.

Selig became acting baseball commissioner in 1992, took over officially in 1998 and retained that role until early 2015. Today, his official title is commissioner emeritus of Major League Baseball. Eight other men, most of them eventually reviled by baseball players, team owners and fans for reasons too numerous and complex to recount here, preceded Selig as baseball commissioner. Each either died in office, was fired or resigned under pressure.

“I was the first one to beat those odds,” says Selig, who nevertheless leaves a complicated and contradictory legacy.

“Selig’s defining trait as commissioner, to me, is his political acumen,” Brian Costa, a baseball writer for The Wall Street Journal, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as Selig’s tenure was coming to a close. “He wrangled public dollars for new stadiums that helped usher in an era of record-breaking attendance totals. And he built consensus among a group of 30 owners with disparate interests and a propensity for bickering. That, in turn, empowered him to broker deals with the players union that have allowed baseball to make everyone, from the owners to the 25th man on the roster, a whole lot richer.”

“He was the ultimate outsider — a Midwesterner, a car salesman, a Jew, a small-market owner — who fashioned himself into the ultimate insider,” The Washington Post’s Dave Sheinen wrote in 2014. “He was the acute technophobe — no computer, no email — who positioned baseball, through MLB Advanced Media, as the industry standard for delivering games, tickets and merchandise through the Internet. He was the hard-core traditionalist who wound up leading the sport through a period of unprecedented change and upheaval.”

Selig takes heat from critics for the 1994 players strike that canceled the World Series for the first time in 90 years, his unpopular decision to end the 2002 All-Star Game at Milwaukee’s Miller Park in the 11th inning with a 7-7 tie and what they believe was a delayed reaction to steroid use in baseball.

“Nothing is as simple as we remember it,” Selig tells students in his seminar class, which he teaches with professor David McDonald, an Alice D. Mortenson/Petrovich Distinguished Chair in Russian History. “Did the fate of Western civilization change because of that All-Star Game? I don’t think so.”

That’s one of the quotes written down by Zach Rosen, a 22-year-old senior majoring in international business and marketing, among the first 20 or so students to take the course in the fall and also founder of the Sconnie Sports Talk blog.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime classroom experience,” Rosen says. “When you’re listening to Bud Selig talk about when he brought baseball back to Milwaukee, it’s very surreal. I wrote down a lot of what he said, just for fun. He never shied away from talking about anything. He was very open with us.”

Selig, who also teaches at Marquette University, declined a request from Isthmus to sit in on the class; his secretary — who does her best to make sure that “Bud” be addressed only as “commissioner emeritus” — offers that only one reporter ever has been allowed to observe him teach.

Rosen and others say that Selig peppers lessons about the role Jackie Robinson played in the civil rights movement, and how labor conflicts and drug abuse shaped baseball’s modern era, with personal stories culled from his own experiences. Additionally, many reading assignments focus on Selig’s actions as commissioner.

The study of history, of course, is both objective and subjective. But McDonald says he is impressed with Selig’s fair-minded approach to his own legacy.

“I’ve been struck at how well he engages articles that can be very critical of him, and how he can give them their due when it’s merited but also argue against them in a constructive way,” says McDonald, who leads the class. “That’s a good model for the students in how to deal with historical controversy and personal criticism.”

Selig’s ties to Madison — which he calls his “city of triumphs” — remained strong over the years. He vividly recalls visiting high-ranking officials at Bowman Dairy and Oscar Mayer in the late 1960s (two of Madison’s most popular businesses at the time) to secure financial help in bringing the Pilots to Wisconsin. With a freakishly strong memory, Selig even can tell you where he ate lunch that day: the old Brathaus on State Street.

Before he began teaching with McDonald, Selig often was a guest lecturer on the UW campus. Upon completion of his autobiography (in progress now, he says), Selig plans to archive his papers — “every bit of correspondence from 1963 to the present” — on campus.

He also has endowed two history chairs and two history scholarships at the UW. “The more I do this, the more I enjoy being around kids,” he says. “I don’t want to sound trite, but education is so important. I told everybody in baseball about this, so the endowment funds have grown.”

McDonald says Selig offers something special as a teacher. “What’s fantastic for the students is the commissioner’s ability to convey the textures of the human experience and his memory — for detail, for sequence, for tracing cause and effect,” McDonald says. “I usually focus on people who are no longer alive. So to work with someone who has such clear and consistent recollections of events that — if you’re a fan — you’ve read about a million times is a really remarkable opportunity.”

Mention a person, place or thing, and Selig will tell you a quick story or rattle off a funny one-liner.

Selig on his favorite Milwaukee County Stadium memory: “Henry Aaron hitting a home run to win the pennant for the Milwaukee Braves in the 11th inning in 1957. I was just a kid sitting in an obstructed-view seat in the upper deck. It’s a moment in history I’ll never forget, and I’ve told Henry that a lot.”

Selig on Bob Harlan, former chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the Green Bay Packers: “I’ve met a lot of people in sports since 1963, but there is no one I respect more than Bob Harlan. I remember when he was going through his stadium battle up there, and we had just been through ours with Miller Park, and it was awful. Bob would call me all the time. Lambeau Field is a shrine, but the [2000 stadium renovation referendum] passed 53% to 47%. Can you imagine? Bob had to go door to door [asking for support].”

Selig on Milwaukee Brewers’ Hall of Fame radio announcer Bob Uecker, who played for the Milwaukee Braves and was hired by the Brewers in 1971 as a scout: “Worst fuckin’ scout in the history of baseball.”

Selig on Oscar Mayer, to whom he pitched a financial stake in the Brewers: “Boy, I was really nervous to meet him. And he was the kindest, nicest man. After an hour he got up, hugged me and said ‘Partner, I’m in.’”

Selig on iconic Packers coach Vince Lombardi: “I once had a secretary who also worked for Vince. I overheard her telling somebody in her office, ‘How smart could I have been? I’ve worked for two madmen in my life!’”

Acquiring the Seattle Pilots and renaming the team the Brewers was just the beginning of Selig’s baseball career.

One week after the new team moved into Milwaukee County Stadium, former home of the Braves, the Brewers hosted their first game and wound up on the wrong end of a 12-0 shutout by the California Angels. Milwaukee went 65-97 that season and finished 33 games out of first place.

“That first game was the only one the Brewers ever played that I didn’t give a damn if we won,” Selig says. “I was so happy we had a team. I’m walking down the aisle that day and a guy stops me and says, ‘Hey’ — whenever someone stops you and points their finger at you, you know you’ve got trouble — ‘you wanted a team in the worst way, and that’s what you got!’ I said ‘It’s only one game, pal. Don’t get too excited.’”

The real excitement would come later, in the form of Hall of Famers such as Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Rollie Fingers and Don Sutton. From 1978 to 1982, the Brewers were among the most entertaining and promising teams in baseball. They appeared in the 1982 World Series, losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. By Selig’s count, Milwaukee would have won the wild card six or seven times between 1978 and 1992 had that playoff format been implemented prior to the 1995 season.

By 1992, Selig had worked his way up baseball’s ranks to chairman of the Executive Council of Major League Baseball. In accordance with MLB’s power structure he took over as acting commissioner of baseball after team owners gave his predecessor, Fay Vincent, a “no confidence” vote in 1992 and forced Vincent to resign.

“I didn’t know what to say to my wife, so I said, ‘Don’t worry. In two to four months, I’ll be out of this,’ ” Selig remembers. “You can imagine, 23 years later, I was still hearing about the two to four months.”

In 1998, team owners made Selig permanent commissioner, and during his 23 years in the position, Selig was instrumental in overseeing changes that now define professional baseball. They include splitting the American and National Leagues’ two divisions into three and creating the wild-card format — moves that expanded the number of teams eligible for postseason play and increased fan engagement. He also implemented interleague play, introduced revenue sharing and made sure all 30 teams also have an ownership stake in Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the league’s Internet and interactive branch.

Selig frequently uses the term “fight” when describing his accomplishments, and he cites 1994 — when the Major League Baseball Players Association went on strike for the eighth and ultimately final time in baseball history — as the lowest point of his commissionership. The 232-day strike wiped out the World Series for the first time since 1904, and attendance suffered a major blow for years.

But the long-term result was a far more financially equal playing field in the form of revenue sharing and a luxury tax intended to slow payroll growth for high-revenue teams.

 “We were trying to change the economic structure of the game,” Selig says today. “I knew I was doing the right thing. As a result, in the last 11 years, every one of our teams has been in the playoffs. The Kansas City Royals, the smallest team in baseball, has been in the World Series the last two years. That couldn’t have happened years ago.”

Selig refers to an inquiry about his regrets during the steroids era as “a fair question” but then denies that Major League Baseball was slow in its reaction to the use of PEDs in the late 1990s and early 2000s: “That’s a bunch of nonsense.” He says he tried to make headway on drug testing, but was blocked by the players union.

In the wake of the steroids scandal, Selig commissioned U.S. Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) to investigate the use of PEDs and human growth hormone in the game. The report was released in 2007 and concluded that Selig, team officials, the MLBPA and players all shared “responsibility for the steroid era.”

“I wanted to do it,” Selig says about bringing in Mitchell, even though the report’s release led to calls for the commissioner’s resignation. “I had no secrets, and there was nothing I was afraid of. We fought and went through a lot of congressional hearings, but today we have the toughest testing program in American sports — and this is a sport that never had any drug testing. We went through the cocaine era in the ’80s, and we didn’t have anything then. So today I’m proud of where we are.”

In Selig’s campus office, among the framed photograph of an overhead view of County Stadium and a posed picture of Selig and his wife, Sue, with President Obama, sits a heavy glass nameplate featuring the engraved logo of the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Milwaukee Brewers beat Arizona in the 2011 National League Division Series, three games to two, then lost the NL Championship Series to the Cardinals, who went on to win the World Series that year.

Since then, Milwaukee — which will open its season at Miller Park on April 4 against the San Francisco Giants — hasn’t come close to playing in the postseason.

And it probably won’t this season, either, as the Brewers are in a major rebuilding phase. In September, the Brewers introduced 30-year-old David Stearns as the team’s new general manager. Since then, Stearns fired five of seven coaches and replaced half of the team’s 40-man roster.

“He’s a very smart young man,” Selig says of Stearns, who previously worked for Major League Baseball on its collective bargaining negotiating team and most recently was assistant general manager of the Houston Astros. “Look, he’s doing what he has to do. Our farm system” — here he catches himself speaking in the first person regarding the Brewers, a habit he has yet to break and probably never will — “The Brewers’ farm system used to be ranked 28th, 29th, 30th in baseball. It’s No. 5 today. So the Brewers are on the right track, but it’s painful in the interim.”

Selig still follows the game and obviously retains “a soft spot in my heart for the Brewers.”

Likewise, the Brewers have a soft spot for Selig. Last year, the “Selig Experience” opened at Miller Park — complete with a Selig hologram. The 1,500-square-foot exhibit, located on the Loge Level in the left-field corner, features artifacts from Selig’s tenure as Brewers owner. The highlight is a 12-minute multimedia presentation narrated by Bob Uecker tracing Selig’s story back to his boyhood fascination with the old Triple-A Milwaukee Brewers team at Borchert Field, which was replaced by County Stadium and later Miller Park. Brewers officials say the Selig Experience will be open during 2016 home games on a first-come, first-served basis.

These days, Selig commutes between Madison, Milwaukee and Arizona (where Sue Selig lives for about half the year). He also teaches a sports law class at Marquette University and expects to teach a yet-to-be-determined topic at Arizona State University in Tempe. While he may stay busier than most men his age, Selig still values time spent doing what he loves most: being a baseball fan.

 The best part of his day, he says, comes when he can kick back and watch any MLB game he wants. He lives in the present as much as possible, revisiting the past when required — as he does on the UW campus.

The future, he claims, is out of his hands.

“I always say I’m going to let historians determine my legacy,” he says. “But bringing the Brewers to Milwaukee when the odds were stacked against us? I’ll always be proudest of that. Was there sadness when we lost the World Series? You bet there was. Then, as commissioner, were there difficult times? Every day. But in the end, I got done everything I wanted to get done.”