WENDY SELIG-PRIEB LOOKS once more at the mirror she’s pulled from her purse, pushes back her dark brown hair, and takes a deep breath. This moment has been coming for months, ever since she told her father she wanted to step down as the president and CEO of his baseball team. The announcement was set for tomorrow, September 26, three days before this awful season will mercifully end.
She had planned to walk out and meet the media, smile, and introduce local hero Ulice Payne as the new president of the Brewers. And in her final act as president, she was going to introduce former Texas GM Doug Melvin as the new general manager, the man who’ll team with Payne to usher in a new era for Milwaukee baseball.
That was her plan. But all that changed earlier today, when she learned someone had leaked the news to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A radio host with a drive time talk show also had the news. So she finally told Dean Taylor that his three-year run as Brewers GM was over this morning. And now she’s taking one more deep breath before facing the cameras and reporters in the hastily called media conference this late September evening at Miller Park.
Just one more botched play in a season Wendy would just as soon forget.
First it was firing manager Davey Lopes after 15 games—12 of them losses. Then slugger Geoff Jenkins went down for the season in mid-June when he slid awkwardly into third base and blew out the ligaments in his right ankle. Interim manager Jerry Royster’s embarrassing on-the-field argument with closer Mike DeJean punctuated July.
Outfielder Alex Sanchez was disciplined for laughing in the outfield in late August, only to break his leg while sliding into second base on September 1. They benched Jose Hernandez eight times in the final two weeks of the season so the veteran shortstop would finish with 188 strikeouts, one short of the single-season strikeout record.
No Brewers regular will hit .300 or 30 home runs or score 100 runs. No starting pitcher will win more games than he’s lost or have an ERA lower than 4.10. No reliever will save as many as 30 games. Almost a million fewer fans showed up at Miller Park this season than in its debut a year ago, far short of the 3 million Selig-Prieb expected would come out and support her team.
This is not the way Wendy wanted to leave. But then, there have not been many seasons to remember since she took over for her father 10 years ago this month. The Brewers are 413–558 on Selig-Prieb’s watch. This year’s team is 55–102, its 10th straight losing season, and no matter what happens in the last five games, it will go down as the worst team in the franchise’s 33-year history.
Wendy promised to give the fans a winning team if they gave the Brewers a stadium, a promise she failed to keep—and the backlash has been harsh. She’s been blistered on talk radio and scolded in the pages of the town’s newspaper. She’s withdrawn so much the media is making comparisons to the late reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes.
It is time to leave, even if her legacy is in tatters. Her father has his share of critics, no question, but Bud will always be remembered as the man who brought a baseball team back to Milwaukee. Even though his daughter ran a mom-and-pop shop in the big money era of Steinbrenner and built a world-class stadium, she’ll always be remembered as the Selig who turned the team to dust.
Bud was disappointed with her decision, but he understood. And he likes Ulice Payne very much—he has ever since the former Marquette basketball player worked so hard on the Stadium Board to make sure the taxpayers gave Selig his new ballpark. Payne is a true insider, a member of a handful of local boards and managing director of the Milwaukee office of Foley & Lardner, the influential law firm Bud and baseball have used for decades. And now the Commissioner can boast about hiring the first black president in Major League Baseball, too.
Besides, the money that will flow to the Brewers thanks to the new labor agreement will help pay down the debt—now $131 million, down $40 million from 2001—so Selig and his daughter can finally sell their team. Not yet, but soon. Wendy loves the Brewers, has loved them since she was a little girl. Now 42, she’s dedicated her entire adult life to this team. But really, how much longer can the Commissioner own the controlling share of one of the game’s 30 teams?
Her husband Laurel pokes his head into her office. “Ready?” he asks. “The press is all waiting in the media room.”
The newspaper cameras click away, and Selig-Prieb ends her tenure with an explanation and an apology. She’s staying on in the newly created role of Chairman of the Board and will concentrate on the team’s charitable efforts and “issues related to Major League Baseball.” But she’s through with the team’s day-to-day operations. That now belongs to the six-foot-six man with a five-year contract sitting by her side.
“He’s the boss,” Wendy says with a tilt of her head to Payne.
She has one last thing to tell the fans. “I want to personally apologize to our fans for the failings of this season,” Selig-Prieb says. “The season has been tremendously disappointing, painful, and at times embarrassing. We can talk about reasons and offer excuses, but the season met no one’s expectations.”
The rest of the conference is a blur. Incoming GM Doug Melvin talks calmly about challenging the team’s scouts to find the next comeback player of the year and the 19th-round draft pick who turns into a gem. Melvin’s strength is judging talent, and his Rangers won three division titles in seven years before Tom Hicks bought the team and turned it over to Alex Rodriguez. Melvin understands how to build a winner, and knows the first thing he has to change.
“We have to start thinking that we do have a chance,” says Melvin, who doesn’t realize he’s just taken an indirect shot at Wendy and her father and their years of moaning about seasons doomed from the start. “You can’t get into a negative mind-set and say we don’t have a chance. I’d like to start today and change that attitude.”
There is no shortage of irony when Payne tells reporters his models for success are the A’s and the Twins, two teams the Commissioner thought about shutting down. He acknowledges his lack of baseball experience, says he has great confidence in Melvin—whom he’s just met—and admits he “doesn’t have all of the answers” but vows to find them.
“I’m going to take this challenge quite seriously,” he says.
When asked about being the first African American president of a major league team, Payne says he feels good but insists he’d rather be remembered for his performance. He says the new labor agreement gives the Brewers a better chance to compete and claims he’s ready to “take the bitter with the sweet.”
The team’s new president also concedes he had reservations about leaving his job at Foley & Lardner to run the team still under the rather large shadow of the game’s Commissioner. “But I’ve been assured that I have full authority to make changes,” Payne says.
He’ll soon learn those assurances come with exceptions.
While the Brewers close out the season with more losses and changes—Milwaukee fires interim manager Jerry Royster after the team lost four of its final five games—several teams the Commissioner labeled aberrations joyously prepare for postseason play. Counting the wild-card Angels, who’ll take on the Yankees in the opening round, three teams from Selig’s contraction derby reach the playoffs. The A’s reeled off a 20-game winning streak—only the 1916 Giants (26) and 1935 Cubs (21) had longer runs—and tied the Yankees with a game-high 103 wins.
Oakland’s first-round opponent: Pohlad’s Twins, who ran away with the AL Central with the fourth-lowest-paid roster in baseball, one step above Oakland.
“We have different teams in the playoffs, and that’s good—I’m delighted,” the Commissioner says on the eve of the playoffs. “But does that take away from what we’ve been saying? No.”
Maybe that’s because Steinbrenner’s Yankees are once again the odds-on favorite to win another World Series title. New York is Milwaukee’s polar opposite, selling a team-record 3.5 million tickets and winning its fifth straight AL East title. Giambi paid big dividends, belting 41 home runs, driving in 122, and hitting .314. Soriano led the AL with 209 hits and fell one home run short of 40–40 in a lineup that scored a game-high 897 runs. David Wells won 19 games in his return to New York, and a rejuvenated Andy Pettitte—with a little help from HGH—was the Yankees’ best pitcher down the stretch, winning 11 of 13 decisions.
Steinbrenner’s $135 million collection of stars has a combined 543 games of playoff experience. The scrappy Angels have two—a pair of appearances by pitcher Kevin Appier with Oakland in 2000. All goes according to form when Giambi, Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, and Rondell White hit home runs to power New York to an 8–5 win in Game 1.
But after the Yankees blow an 8th-inning lead and lose Game 2, both the momentum and the series shift to Anaheim. The Angels wipe out a five-run deficit and win Game 3 to push the Yankees to the brink. And when Anaheim scores eight times on 10 hits in the 5th inning of Game 4, New York’s season is all but over. The Yankees endure chants of “Go Home Yankees” from Angels fans, who watch their team roll to a 9–5 victory and the first postseason series win in the franchise’s 42-year history.
It’s the first time Steinbrenner’s team has gone home before reaching the World Series since 1997, and it’s easy to see why: the Angels hit .376—the highest in division-series history—while the Yankees stranded 44 runners in scoring position. The final ERA for the staff Joe Torre calls the best he’s ever managed: 8.21.
Year One of doing it George’s way is anything but a success. Steinbrenner immediately schedules an organizational meeting at his Tampa headquarters, but he can’t wait even a day to vent his frustration. It’s almost midnight when the Boss picks up the phone in his hotel suite and calls Yankees President Randy Levine.
“Get your fucking ass over to the Regency,” Steinbrenner tells Levine.
“Why?” Levine asks.
“Just get here,” Steinbrenner says.
Levine gets dressed, tells his wife he has to see his boss, grabs a cab, and a few minutes later walks into the Regency. He calls Steinbrenner. “I’m here,” Levine says.
“Wait for me in the lobby,” George says.
Forty minutes later the elevator door opens. Steinbrenner emerges, spies Levine, and walks over to his team president.
“Your fucking team sucks. Now get the fuck out of here,” says Steinbrenner, who heads back to the elevator before Levine can even reply.
The Angels dispatch the surprising Twins in five games to advance to the World Series. Waiting for them are the Giants and the game’s best hitter. A year after setting the home run record, Barry Bonds hit a career-high .370, best in the game. He slammed 46 home runs in only 403 official at bats—opponents walked him an astonishing 198 times—a performance that boosted the sales of ZMA, the supplement he endorses for a former Bay Area musician-turned-entrepreneur named Victor Conte.
The two West Coast teams wage an extraordinary Series, mixing blowouts with games decided by a single run. The Angels emerge as the unlikely champions after seven games, but Bonds is by far the biggest story. The Giants superstar hits .471 with four home runs in 17 at bats—the Angels walk him 13 times—erasing a career of mediocre postseason performances. The only negative is persistent speculation over whether Bonds is using steroids.
“They’re testing us next year,” says a defiant Bonds. “That will answer all your questions.”
But a federal agent in Bonds’ backyard has already decided not to wait that long.
Anyone wondering how George Steinbrenner will respond to the new labor agreement and its “Yankees tax” will find out soon enough. While Selig tells interested groups in Portland and Washington, D.C., to prepare bids to purchase the Expos, Steinbrenner sends a clear message to his adversaries.
On December 19, Steinbrenner hands a three-year, $21 million contract to 28-year-old Japanese star Hideki Matsui. “This year, I hit 50 home runs with 107 RBI, and my batting average was .334,” Matsui wrote in a letter he sent to all 30 teams. “I hope your team will be interested to offer me a contract.” Many were, but Steinbrenner made sure Godzilla—Matsui’s nickname in his home country—wound up in pinstripes after first signing a partnership agreement with Matsui’s team, the Yomiuri Giants, the premier franchise in Japan.
On Christmas Eve, the Yankees announce they’ve signed star Cuban pitcher Jose Contreras to a four-year, $32 million contract. Steinbrenner has already picked up Pettitte’s $11.5 million option for next season. And when he finally signs off on a one-year, $10.1 million deal to bring back Clemens—who is seven wins shy of 300 and announces he’ll enter the Hall of Fame wearing a Yankees cap—George’s payroll will swell to $166 million, a full $40 million higher than it was at the start of last season.
“The Evil Empire extends its tentacles even into Latin America,” says Red Sox President Larry Lucchino, whose new general manager, 28-year-old Theo Epstein, was no match for George in the battle over Contreras.
Steinbrenner also wants to let everyone know who he holds accountable for his team’s first-round failure and who he blames for the labor deal he’s convinced unfairly punishes his team. This time he chooses the New York Daily News as his messenger, and the paper sends reporter Wayne Coffey down to Tampa to interview the Boss for a package of stories that will run at year’s end, commemorating Steinbrenner’s purchase of the Yankees exactly 30 years ago to the week.
The two men sit in a spotless blue-carpeted conference room overlooking Legends Field. Pictures of Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio hang on the wall behind George, who tells Coffey he wants to “sound the bugle” on Torre and his coaching staff. He’s never had a better friend as a manager than Torre, Steinbrenner says, and he’s glad Torre has become a local icon and “a surefire Hall of Famer.”
But Torre was fired as manager three times before coming to New York, George reminds Coffey, who can’t help but notice how much it grates on the Yankees owner that Torre receives so much credit for the Yankees’ success. “I will not see him drop back into the way he was before,” Steinbrenner says. “He’s come this far because of an organization—and he’s got to remember that.”
And George wants Jeter to remember that baseball comes first. “He wasn’t totally focused last year,” says the Boss. “When I read in the paper that he’s out until 3 a.m. in New York City going to a birthday party, I won’t lie—that doesn’t sit well with me.”
Steinbrenner says he’s more mellow now and insists the “young elephants”—son-in-law Steve Swindal and his sons Hal and Hank—are going to run the business one day. He thinks his battle with Cablevision will affect the entire television industry. And he defends signing Matsui and Contreras while warning Boston owner John Henry not to trust Lucchino: “He talks out of both sides of his mouth.”
But George saves his sharpest words for the man in Milwaukee and his new labor deal. “I’m a Bud Selig man,” says Steinbrenner, and Coffey can hear the “but” even before George utters another word. “But you work your butt off to build up your team, and then you are faced with an additional penalty?”
George pauses, letting his words sink in. “I consider Selig a good friend. But while I’m loyal to Bud Selig, the biggest beneficiary in this whole plan is the Milwaukee Brewers. That doesn’t seem quite right.
“Sometimes I don’t know how he sleeps at night.”