EXCUSE ME, MR. COMMISSIONER,” says Lori Keck. “Where would you like this to go?”
Keck is standing in Bud Selig’s office, holding a Brewers team photograph, one of the hundreds of pieces of Selig’s baseball life he’s collected over the last three decades. Selig’s daughter Wendy calls her father a pack rat, and that has never been more evident than now, the final week of January 1999 and Selig’s last in his cramped, dingy office in County Stadium.
Selig will have a new office and view next week, when he finally moves into his new digs, a spacious corner suite on the 20th floor of the Firstar Center, Wisconsin’s tallest building at 42 stories. Instead of standing on a chair to peer out narrow windows and see parking lots, he can gaze through floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the city on one side and the rising Miller Park on the other.
Selig’s assistant has been packing for weeks—sorting out what goes downtown from what’s earmarked for storage and eventual placement in a Brewers museum at Miller Park—and boxes are piled all around the 12-by-14-foot office Selig has called home for 32 years. Bud was all of 31 when he first took a seat behind the desk here in 1966 as he started his quest to replace the Braves, then starting their first season in Atlanta after 13 years in Milwaukee.
There was no cable TV back then, no cell phones or Internet. Computers were just about as big as his entire office. Neil Armstrong would walk on the moon, a doctor in South Africa would perform the world’s first heart transplant, and a few hundred thousand kids would flock to Woodstock before another baseball team would once again call County Stadium home.
Two tickets to that first game—dated April 7, 1970—are still framed and hanging on one office wall. The Brewers, a collection of journeymen plucked in the expansion draft a year earlier, lost 12–0 that day. It was the first of 97 losses that season, but Selig hardly cared. He had a baseball team again, and this time he was in charge.
Selig’s insisted on keeping every award, trophy, and picture he’s been presented ever since. Money was always tight, forcing Keck to be creative when shopping for frames. She did make sure to buy a good one for the note sent from her former boss, Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi, which congratulates Bud for bringing a team back to Milwaukee. That frame still hasn’t come down, with just days to go before they move.
Most of Bud’s collection wound up on two inexpensive bookshelves. A rather plain-looking trophy sits in one of those cases, the trophy presented to Selig when his Brewers won the 1982 AL pennant, his team’s only championship in 29 years. Pictures of Bud’s parents are mixed in with those of Hank Aaron and Selig’s other favorite players.
“What about this one?” Keck asks him, holding another team picture.
The phone rings, grabbing Bud’s attention. “This is the Commissioner,” says Selig, who started answering the phone this way as soon as he was elected last July. He’s asked everyone to address him as Commissioner as well, now that he’s no longer first among equals as chairman of the Executive Council.
As the final year of the millennium gets under way, Selig has an ambitious agenda and he’s not wasting any time. He’s preparing to eliminate the position of league president and fold the two leagues under his domain. It’s a long-overdue move that will centralize baseball’s business operations and, according to a Wharton School study, maximize its profits.
But the move is not without risk, at least for the short term. Selig’s decision means saying good-bye to NL President Len Coleman, the game’s highest-ranking African American. And the leading black players in the game have already criticized Selig for hiring Beeston and his three vice presidents without even interviewing a black candidate. Beeston had told Bob Watson about the baseball operations job in July of 1998, but Watson says he never heard back, and the job was later filled by A’s general manager Sandy Alderson. Just a year after Selig punctuated the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier by promising to promote greater diversity from top to bottom, not one African American made it to any of baseball’s top five jobs.
“If the heads of baseball are not fair in that area, how can they expect the people underneath them to be fair?” Frank Robinson told the New York Times the same week Selig was moving into his new office. Similar complaints were lodged by Selig’s friend Hank Aaron, Watson, Joe Morgan, and other prominent black voices in a game that was rapidly losing both black players and black fans.
Selig’s explanation: he already had the best candidates for the positions in his inner circle. “We’re not done yet,” he told the New York Times, “and we’re sensitive to the concerns that are raised.” How Bud will address the concerns of the game’s leading black voices remains unclear.
Something else hasn’t changed, either: with the labor contract due to expire after the 2000 season, Selig is planning another run at George Steinbrenner’s money. And this time with a new twist.
No longer able to plead poverty after the game’s revenues jumped $700 million to $2.5 billion since the 1996 labor deal, Selig has a new battle cry: competitive balance. More than half the teams in baseball will start this season without “hope and faith” of competing, says the Commissioner. And he lays the blame for that dire situation solely on the ever-rising payrolls of the big revenue teams.
Forget that the current revenue sharing plan is expected to transfer $140 million from the top six teams to the bottom six this season. Or that revenue sharing won’t be fully implemented until 2000, the same year Miller Park and three more new stadiums will debut. Or that nine teams drew at least 2.9 million fans last season, an MLB record.
Never mind that the Expos, Twins, and Royals all pocketed their revenue sharing checks instead of putting the money back into their team the way Steinbrenner does with his profits. Indeed, Montreal admitted it made a profit last season, when the Expos’ $11 million revenue sharing check exceeded their payroll by $2 million.
And ignore the fact that all but six teams have reached the postseason since 1991, the best showing of any pro sport. Or that one of those six absentees just happens to be Selig’s Brewers.
Fighting the appearance of talking out of both sides of his mouth, Selig told the media at the January 14 owners meeting that his sport was “in the midst of a marvelous renaissance” before adding, “But I can’t stand here and tell you that we don’t have a disparity problem. There are problems that need to be addressed.”
His solution is classic Selig: at the same meeting, he announces the formation of the Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics, created to study baseball’s payroll-disparity problem and offer recommendations to the Commissioner. To make sure he gets to the bottom of this problem, said Selig, he tapped people with “impeccable credentials” who could bring a “fresh approach.”
And Selig’s four choices indeed have impressive credentials.
But it’s hard to see where the fresh ideas will come from.
George Mitchell, who will head up the study, has close ties to several owners. He will be joined by Yale President Richard Levin, who drafted MLB’s first salary cap proposal in 1989, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who represented the owners on baseball’s first economic study committee in 1992, and Selig’s friend George Will, who serves on the board of not one but two teams—the Orioles and Padres. Selig will chair the committee and appoint 13 other owners and team executives.
No one from the union will be included.
The Commissioner has laid down strict guidelines: the panel will only use economic data supplied by Major League Baseball—no independent research will be done, no outside data considered. And the panel will focus only on the seasons between 1995 and 1999, which just happen to be the seasons when teams with the deepest pockets—e.g., the Yankees—were better able to prosper after the self-inflicted losses related to the ’94 strike.
“Mr. Commissioner,” says Keck, walking back into Selig’s office, “what about this one?” She’s holding a tennis racket with a baseball-bat handle and trying hard not to laugh. It was a gift, one that took a playful swipe at the days when Selig actually had a hobby. “Oh, you can keep that one, Lori,” Selig says, and now he’s laughing, too.
Selig will be happy when this move is over and he and his staff of four—three administrative assistants and a security guard—settle into their new quarters come Monday. His old office won’t lie vacant for even a day—his daughter and now Brewers President Wendy Selig-Prieb is already packed and ready to move in. But her stay will be short. Miller Park, the focus of much of Selig-Prieb’s attention, is scheduled to be ready for Opening Day in 2000.
The Miller Park construction site draws a small crowd almost every day, especially when the men are scheduled to work on its one-of-a-kind fan-shaped roof. Selig has been a constant presence, and he was there 18 days ago when the first panel of the stadium’s dome was hoisted up by the 467-foot crane dubbed Big Blue, itself so large it had to be assembled on the site.
The project manager postponed the lift of the 427-ton panel for 17 days, waiting for the wind to dip below 10 miles an hour. It was all of 8 degrees—but with no wind—at 9:30 a.m. on January 8 when Selig watched Big Blue lift the 260-foot-long, 100-foot-wide panel off the ground. It took three crews almost two hours to raise the panel 200 feet and slide it into place, where 30 ironworkers went about bolting and welding the roof to the stadium superstructure deep into the afternoon.
It would be hard to find a man in baseball more content than Bud Selig that day—or this day, either. So many of his dreams have come true. He is running his sport. His daughter is running his team. And the taxpayers are building him a stadium. Everything, it seems, is falling into place.
Brian Cashman is battling through traffic, intent on getting to the big organizational meeting at the Yankees’ Tampa complex on time. It’s February 17, the day before pitchers and catchers report for spring training, and Cashman doesn’t want to give George Steinbrenner any more reasons to be angry with him. The Boss is mad enough already.
These should be the best of days for Cashman. At 31, he’s the general manager of baseball’s best team, one heavily favored to win its third championship in four years. Just two weeks ago he signed a three-year contract worth $1.1 million, a big raise from the one-year deal he requested after replacing Bob Watson last winter.
Steinbrenner declined to make the new contract public, then waited for Cashman to react, but the young GM didn’t take the bait. He knows all about George’s mind games, and he’s determined not to let Steinbrenner torture him the way he tortured his previous 12 general managers. Cashman got to the top spot far sooner than he ever expected, and he’s not going to let Steinbrenner’s antics drive him away.
But there’s no escaping George’s anger right now, not after Cashman blew Derek Jeter’s arbitration case. The Yankees’ young star pointed to his .308 career batting average, his two championship rings in three years, and asked for a record $5 million for the coming season. Cashman countered at $3.2 million. Jeter’s agent offered to settle at $4.1 million just hours before the case went to the arbitrator two days ago, but Cashman held firm.
“I’m going with your recommendation,” Steinbrenner told him, “but you better be right.”
Cashman learned he was wrong yesterday while preparing for Mariano Rivera’s arbitration hearing, set for later today. The error cost Steinbrenner almost a million dollars. “You got hornswoggled,” George roared at him over the phone. “You’re on the fucking bubble.”
It’s clear Cashman missed the jump in the market—a jump largely driven by the Yankees—and now he’s worried the arbitrator will favor Mariano’s request for $4.25 million over the team’s $3 million offer. Steinbrenner spends freely, but he detests getting beat at the bargaining table.
There will be holy hell to pay if he loses Rivera’s case, too, Cashman thinks as he winds his way through Tampa’s traffic. And George is still chewing on him for failing to reel in Roger Clemens, who’s forcing his way out of Toronto. Steinbrenner dearly wants Clemens in a Yankees uniform after missing out two years ago, but months of conversations with Blue Jays GM Gord Ash have gone nowhere.
The reason is simple: every proposal from Ash starts with David Wells and ends with minor league star Alfonso Soriano, and that’s not going to fly. Cashman is willing to deal Wells, even though the left-hander was a career-best 18–4 last season—including a perfect game—and Yankees fans love him. George likes him, too. But Cashman’s heard the portly 35-year-old spent the offseason partying with actor Tom Arnold, and he’s worried that Wells will come to camp fat and complacent.
But Cashman’s not giving away Soriano, the team’s top hitting prospect, not for a 36-year-old pitcher who can demand another trade—or a bigger contract—after this season. Not even one coming off back-to-back Cy Young Awards. Cashman’s so tired of hearing about Clemens he never bothered to answer a voice mail from Ash yesterday. But Steinbrenner will want the latest news, so Cashman grabs his cell and punches in the Toronto GM’s number.
“Make me an offer, Brian,” Ash says when he hears Cashman’s voice.
“No, Gord,” Cashman says. “If you’ve got something in mind, then make me an offer.”
Ash answers quickly. “I want Wells, Graeme Lloyd, and Homer Bush,” he says. “Give me that, and you got Clemens.”
Cashman can hardly believe what he’s just heard.
Lloyd’s a nice left-hander out of the bullpen. And Bush is a fine sub. Neither is essential.
This comes down to Wells for Clemens.
This is a no-brainer.
“Gord,” says Cashman, no longer thinking about Rivera’s arbitration, Tampa traffic, or much of anything else, “I’ll get right back to you.”
Steinbrenner isn’t sure he really heard what his young general manager just told him. “Run that by me again,” he says.
“If we give up Wells, Lloyd, and Bush, we get Roger Clemens,” Cashman repeats.
“Tell them not to do anything until they hear from us,” George says. “And get back here now!”
The Boss watched Clemens lead the AL in wins, strikeouts, and ERA in each of the last two seasons and dreamed what the burly right-hander would’ve meant to his Yankees. Indeed, some are calling Clemens—with his 233 wins, 3,153 strikeouts, 44 shutouts, and a record five Cy Young Awards—one of the three best pitchers of all time. Steinbrenner can already envision records falling in front of huge Yankee Stadium crowds. This will be bigger than signing Catfish Hunter, bigger than Dave Winfield, maybe even bigger than Reggie Jackson.
Hell, this could be the Yankees’ biggest deal since acquiring another former Red Sox hurler—Babe Ruth.
Still, Steinbrenner wants the seven men now sitting in his Tampa office—Cashman, Torre, Gene Michael, and Tampa team Billy Connors, Mark Newman, Gordon Blakeley, and Lin Garrett—to put all concerns on the table. Everyone wonders about the fit: Clemens is larger than life, a surefire Hall of Famer whose every action commands attention. Would he upset the chemistry of a team that’s achieved unrivaled success without relying on superstars?
And would his history be a problem? The Yankees were irate last season when Clemens hit Derek Jeter in the ribs—in a spring training game! And Torre was ejected for complaining when Clemens wasn’t booted after he nailed Scott Brosius in the back last September. And how can a team that plays half its games in Yankee Stadium, with its hitter-friendly right-field porch, give up Wells, one of the game’s best left-handed starters?
The men talk for hours, breaking at 7 p.m. to drive over to Malio’s—Steinbrenner’s favorite restaurant and meeting place—where they talk some more. By 9 p.m., Cashman tells Clemens’ agent Randy Hendricks he can advise Roger that things are looking good. A few hours later, Steinbrenner asks for a decision. “I’m not going to vote—we’ll do whatever you decide,” he tells his men, leaving the door open for the blame to fall on someone else should things go wrong.
The decision comes quickly: all seven men want Clemens. Cashman looks at the clock, wanting to note the time of what he’s sure will be the biggest deal of his career. It’s 11:42 p.m. Then he calls Ash.
“You have a deal,” says Cashman, who spends a sleepless night trying to figure out the best way to tell Wells he’s been traded. And thinking about all the headlines Clemens will generate as a New York Yankee.
The next morning, an unshaven Wells, wearing his Yankees cap and a stunned look on his ashen face, sits across from Steinbrenner in the owner’s office at Legends Field. Wells is still coming to terms with what Cashman and Torre told him an hour ago: he’s out.
“Ah, Boss,” says David Wells. “What did you do?”
Boomer and the Boss have a special relationship, and they are both trying to hold back tears now as they reminisce about the big things they did the last two seasons. “Best two years of my life,” says Wells, who stands up and embraces George when there is nothing else left to say.
Yankees beat writers are used to covering major stories, and it’s clear there’s a big one today when the clubhouse doors open and they’re instructed to gather in Torre’s office. “We’ve traded David Wells for Roger Clemens,” says Torre, who is just about beaming. A few minutes later Steinbrenner appears on the field and is instantly surrounded.
“We didn’t buy a pennant with Clemens, we traded for him,” the Boss says, at once defensive and defiant. He knows his fellow owners resent his success even as they continue to profit from it. He knows they’re all pushing for a bigger cut of his revenues in the next contract. And he certainly knows Selig wants a bigger—and permanent—luxury tax to stop him from spending so much on his players. He just doesn’t give a damn.
“I know I’m gonna hear it from other owners,” Steinbrenner says. “But I can’t operate by what other people think.”
Steinbrenner gives everyone more to talk about seven days later when he announces he’s signed a letter of intent with the New Jersey Nets to form a holding company called YankeeNets. The goal: to build a sports entertainment company that will maximize their combined television rights, sponsorship opportunities, and advertising deals.
The two sides—Steinbrenner and his Yankees partners and the Nets ownership group led by Ray Chambers and Lewis Katz—will each own 50 percent of the company and will share major decisions. They’ll each own half of both teams but retain final say with their own franchises. The Nets partners will equalize the huge difference between the value of the Yankees ($600 million) and the Nets ($150 million) by giving George and his partners approximately $225 million. That means the Steinbrenner family, who owns 60 percent of the Yankees, will pocket a cool $133 million.
Steinbrenner’s hopes for the new company are clear. YankeeNets will charge cable operators top dollar to carry its programming, which is projected to bring in $153 million in its first year. After rights fees for Yankees and Nets games are paid, the balance—an estimated $90 million at launch—will be split between YankeeNets and its investors. The partnership will also be able to shield some of the revenues on advertising deals, sponsorships, and sales of luxury boxes from MLB and NBA revenue sharing demands.
And the biggest payoff is yet to come. Instead of renting out both teams’ TV rights, Steinbrenner and his partners will be building equity in a business that may one day be more valuable than the Yankees and Nets combined—by far. Analysts are already pegging the value of YankeeNets at almost a billion dollars.
Is it risky? Sure. No content company—and that’s what sports teams are in today’s information age—has ever tried anything this ambitious. Steinbrenner and his partners will have to build a television network from scratch, then persuade the very same cable operators they spurned to carry their programming at what is sure to be a hefty fee. That includes a very unhappy Chuck Dolan, who is already telling George this scheme won’t work. But the Yankees are a trophy property. How can any cable company tell customers they won’t be able to watch the perennial World Champions?
Ray Chambers has another goal. Since retiring in 1989 from Wesray Capital—where he and former Treasury Secretary William Simon pioneered the field of leveraged buyouts and became two of the richest men in America—Chambers has been a full-time philanthropist. His main focus: bringing his riot-torn hometown of Newark back to life.
Buying the Nets last October was an extension of his vision. Chambers is donating all his profits to Newark and four other impoverished New Jersey cities, and he hopes to complement the performing arts center he opened two years ago in downtown Newark with a sports arena for his new basketball team. He’s already spent millions on this goal, and if putting a winning team on the court helps him reach that goal, he’s willing to spend millions more.
George’s new partners fly down to Tampa several times over the next few months to meet with him, his sons, Steve Swindal, Yankees COO Lonn Trost, and other advisers as the company takes shape. They have a long way to go before YankeeNets makes its first dollar—there are roles to define, staff to hire, and investors to recruit—and George has never been especially good at sharing decision making.
But then he’s never parted with half his team before, either.
Sex sells.
And in 1999, no one sells sex better than blond temptress Heather Locklear, star of the Fox network’s popular prime-time soap Melrose Place. So when Nike and the hip Wieden+Kennedy ad team lend Locklear’s sultry smile to Major League Baseball, the grand old game finds something it’s never had before: sex appeal.
The object of Heather’s desire?
The long ball—what else?
By the spring of ’99, even chicks dig the long ball. And with a rising number of players taking Andro—and others stepping up to stronger performance enhancers—there are more than enough long balls for everyone to dig.
The Nike commercial is baseball’s big advertising splash for the spring. It opens with the game’s biggest star, Mark McGwire, in the batting cage, walloping one ball after another into the faraway grandstand. And there’s Locklear, pressed up against the cage in a tight gray T-shirt and red Cardinals cap, following every McGwire blast with a smile and a sigh.
Cut to the sidelines, where Atlanta’s star pitchers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine are throwing a baseball around without a fan in sight.
“How long are they going to worship this guy?” Glavine asks Maddux.
“Hey,” Maddux shouts to the crowd around McGwire, “we have Cy Young winners over here!”
The two pitchers look at each other, then share an epiphany. So after first shopping for new Nikes (of course), they hit the gym hard.
Pumped up, the two pitchers step into the batting cage and rap out long ball after long ball. The hard knock of bat on ball draws a smiling Locklear into the picture, along with an alluring brunette.
“Hi, Tom,” purrs Heather, giving Glavine her best come-hither smile.
The two men bump forearms.
“Chicks dig the long ball,” Maddux tells Glavine.
But wait…
“Hey, have you guys seen Mark?” Locklear asks.
Nike’s “Chicks Dig the Long Ball” ad debuts in April and is an instant hit, its punch line repeated by every SportsCenter anchor and local sportscaster whenever a home run is launched—which is early and often. On April 23, Cardinals third baseman Fernando Tatis sets a major league record by hitting two grand slams in a single inning against LA. On May 10, Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra blasts three home runs—two of them with the bases full—against Seattle. Ten days later, the Mets’ Robin Ventura hits a grand slam in both ends of a doubleheader with Milwaukee.
And the big boys are again hitting homers in bunches. Ken Griffey Jr. hits 10 in a 19-game stretch in May. Sammy Sosa has a game-high 32 homers at the All-Star break, one of 14 players with 22 or more.
But the man the fans worship above all others is still McGwire, who is having another terrific season. The St. Louis superstar smacks 28 home runs in the first half of the season, putting him on pace for a record fourth straight 50-homer season. McGwire’s every home run is national news, and any slump—like his April 19–May 3 home run drought—is a subject of grave concern.
Being baseball’s poster boy is rewarding, but it also takes a toll. McGwire, now 35, has never been a star of this magnitude, and the demands—the endless stream of requests, the near-complete loss of privacy—begin to wear on him. He starts skipping batting practice without notice, leaving the thousands who arrive early to see his BP show with little to do but eat overpriced food and wait hours for the real game to begin.
He’s snapping at the media. “Okay, I’m not the team spokesman,” he barked at writers at Wrigley Field as they approached him after a game in early June. “There are other people we should be paying attention to.”
McGwire’s use of Andro is also a topic of much conversation. Early in the year, McGwire said he’d keep taking Andro until the government made it illegal or the Commissioner banned it, adding that he would no longer answer any questions on the subject. That includes any queries about the supplement company he’s endorsing, the one advertising Andro as “the product behind McGwire’s 70 home runs” and insisting their pills will “take your testosterone levels to new heights.”
Most in the media defend McGwire’s use of Andro, which makes little sense to Dr. Don Catlin, the longtime director of the world’s biggest drug testing lab at UCLA. Catlin says he’s embarrassed by the almost daily emails he receives from foreign colleagues asking why America hasn’t banned the substance that other countries have outlawed for years. “Androstenedione is a steroid, there’s no question about it,” he says. “It shouldn’t be available.”
(It’s also taken as a sign by a former Mets clubhouse man in Long Island who is supplying steroids to a growing number of baseball players. Kirk Radomski figures that if baseball isn’t concerned about Andro, which everyone in the business knows is an anabolic steroid in disguise, there’s no reason to think the sport cares about the steroids he’s mailing out on a regular basis.)
Baseball officials estimate that between 5 and 10 percent of players are using Andro now. The players think it’s at least twice that many, and some of the savvy veterans wonder if McGwire and others are using Andro to mask the use of stronger performance enhancers.
That’s part of what concerns Rangers pitcher Rick Helling, who thinks Don Fehr and other union leaders are underestimating the true scope of steroid use. “It’s a bigger problem than you think,” he told Fehr and his staff at the union’s Executive Board meeting last December. “You don’t see what the players see. There are guys feeling pressure to use drugs to keep their jobs. I think it’s something we need to look into.” Some of the 30-odd players at that meeting agreed, while some didn’t, and Fehr instructed them all to talk to their teams this season and report back to the union.
It’s San Diego superstar Tony Gwynn who once again puts the subject in perspective—and in the open. “We have discussions about this all the time—what if it’s the last year of your contract and you feel you’re not playing well?” Gwynn tells Jack Curry of the New York Times in July. “With the kind of money out there, could Andro or steroids make a difference in your play? And if you only take them one year to prolong your career, would it really be dangerous to your health?”
But none of these concerns makes much of an impression, not when almost every home run McGwire hits is considered historic. On June 8 he belted his 18th homer of the season and 475th of his career, which tied him with Hall of Famers Willie Stargell and Stan “The Man” Musial, now 78 and a beloved St. Louis legend. Next up: Yankees great Lou Gehrig at 493.
And McGwire memorabilia is already historic: in January, Spawn comic book creator Todd MacFarlane paid $3 million for Big Mac’s 70th home run ball. It’s the most ever paid for a piece of baseball history, far ahead of the $641,500 paid for the famous Honus Wagner baseball card and the $451,541 just paid for the uniform the ailing Gehrig wore the day he proclaimed himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
And in this, the last baseball season of the 20th century, what better place to raise McGwire to legendary status than the 70th All-Star Game come July 13 in Boston’s historic Fenway Park? In a brilliant marketing stroke, baseball decides to select an All-Century Team, voted on by fans from a list of 100 living and deceased legends. A full 41 of those legends will be introduced before the All-Star Game.
But first comes the Home Run Derby, now a prime-time fixture on ESPN, and the buzz inside Fenway is all about McGwire. Some Boston fans are content to stand outside the stadium, on Lansdowne Street behind left field, waiting to chase down McGwire blasts that fly over the Green Monster. One woman holds up a sign reading CHICKS DIG THE LONG BALL.
And McGwire delivers, swatting one long ball after another—a record 13 in the first round—almost all of them leaving the park. The most impressive: a 488-foot wallop that flies over the Monster and hits a billboard above faraway railroad tracks. McGwire’s fellow All-Stars whoop it up as much as the fans, with many holding camcorders and recording every swing.
McGwire needs seven home runs to advance to the final round but can only muster three. “I probably tried a little too hard,” he says. No one cares. Ken Griffey Jr. goes on to win the contest, but the fans—those at Fenway, those in uniform, and millions more watching at home—get what they were hoping to see.
If the Home Run Derby was all about selling baseball’s present and future, the next night leans on the game’s connection to its past. The evening opens with a video that borrows heavily from Field of Dreams, replete with the movie’s sound track, its cornfield, and Kevin Costner at Fenway to narrate. “People will always come back to baseball,” says Costner, in a veiled reference to the ’94 strike that’s now all but forgotten. “They call it America’s pastime, but more appropriate, it’s our present and future.”
Fans and today’s All-Stars applaud as 40 of the 100 All-Century nominees take the field. Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton, triple crown winners Frank Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski, each dressed in a suit and wearing a baseball cap, stroll through the outfield to stand in an arc along the edge of Fenway’s infield.
Costner introduces each All-Century nominee. These players, he says, “represent the most talent ever assembled on a baseball field.” Roger Clemens is the second player Costner presents, and the Rocket draws a loud mixture of boos and cheers as he waves a hated Yankees cap. Catcher Carlton Fisk, another ex–Red Sox who finished his career elsewhere, is greeted warmly as he waves a Boston hat. Yastrzemski, beloved after playing 23 seasons in Boston, draws the loudest ovation.
And that leaves one more Boston favorite, a man who barely needs an introduction. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the PA announcer says. “He wore the Red Sox uniform for 22 years. He wore the uniform of the United States Marines for 4½ more. He was the last man to hit .400 in a season.
“Please welcome the greatest hitter that ever lived. No. 9, Hall of Famer, baseball legend… Ted Williams!”
Williams, a month shy of 81 and suffering from vision and mobility problems after a series of strokes, is driven into Fenway on a green golf cart. Teddy Ballgame retired in 1960 with a .344 career average, six batting titles, and a combative relationship with Boston fans. But on this night, he holds his right arm up high and waves his cap to the crowd—something he stubbornly refused to do as a player—and 34,187 adoring fans cheer and wave back.
The golf cart drives slowly down the right-field line, finally coming to rest 50 feet in front of home plate, where Williams will soon stand and throw the first pitch. But in an unscripted move, all the other players—legends and All-Stars alike—surround Teddy Ballgame for what amounts to a giant group hug. Player after player walks up to Williams, eager to shake his hand. Mike Piazza and Larry Walker have tears in their eyes. So does Joe Torre, who plants himself next to Williams’ golf cart and doesn’t leave. The Fox cameras catch Williams quickly wiping away the tears rolling down his face.
Suddenly, Williams grows agitated. “Where’s McGwire?” he shouts. “Where’s McGwire?” McGwire hustles through the crowd of players and squats next to Williams’ cart as Ted starts talking. Then Williams starts pounding his hand on McGwire’s shoulder.
“When you foul a ball off, do you smell smoke?” Williams asks McGwire.
“Ah, yeah, I do,” says McGwire, clearly surprised by the question.
“I told Boggs and Mattingly that,” Williams says. “They thought I was nuts.”
The pregame celebration is running late, and the PA man twice asks the players to return to their dugouts. When the players finally relent, Tony Gwynn is there to steady Williams and help him locate Fisk, now squatting behind the plate. Williams tosses the ball on a fly to Fisk, who catches it, shakes the ball as if his team had just won the World Series, and rushes out to hug the legend while the crowd roars once again.
Taking this in from his seat next to the American League dugout is a beaming Bud Selig. Five days ago he celebrated his first year as Mr. Commissioner. Now he welcomes Ted Williams to the seat next to his, where he’ll spend the next five innings talking to him about hitting and baseball history.
The AL goes on to win 4–1, but it’s Williams’ appearance that everyone will remember. Selig is thrilled that younger fans find his game sexy, thanks to Nike and McGwire. But the game’s ability to connect one generation with the next—exactly as it’s done tonight—is what makes baseball special.
There’s no question sex sells. But in baseball, history sells even better.
It’s going on 5 p.m. the next afternoon, and Selig is back in his Milwaukee office, finishing up another of the day’s long string of phone calls. He’s gamely trying to hold on to the excitement of the past two days, but it’s not easy. Earlier today, the umpires’ union announced that 57 of the game’s 68 umps would walk off the job on September 2 to protest a growing list of grievances. Chief among their complaints: Selig’s intention to move supervision of umpires to the Commissioner’s office as part of his plan to centralize the game.
Umpires’ union chief Richie Phillips prevented Selig’s move earlier this season when he claimed changing supervisors would entitle his members to millions in severance pay. But their contract is up at season’s end, and Selig has already lined up support to bring in replacement umpires.
Tomorrow he flies to Seattle, where he’ll help the Mariners open their new $517 million stadium, the most expensive ever built. He’ll also explain to city officials why the bulk of the yet-unpaid $100 million in cost overruns should be picked up by the taxpayers, not Nintendo, the $4.5 billion Japanese corporation that owns the Mariners. Taxpayers are wondering why the Mariners, who are contractually obligated to pay all overruns, should be allowed to dodge the bill—especially when they will keep every penny generated by the new stadium.
“If I had any brains, I’d get out of here and go home,” he tells Lori Keck as he picks up a phone call. Moments later Keck sees another call come in. It’s Selig’s daughter. “Hi, Wendy,” says Keck, whose mood changes quickly when she hears why Selig-Prieb is calling. “Okay, hold on,” Keck says, who writes two words on a piece of paper:
WENDY. URGENT.
She rushes into Selig’s office, turns on the television, then taps her boss on the shoulder and hands him the message. Selig picks up the call. “Dad,” says his daughter, anxiety heavy in her voice. “It’s really bad.”
The picture on Selig’s TV tells the story. What used to be the 467-foot crane called Big Blue is now a long piece of twisted metal draped over the crumbling side of the Brewers’ new home, Miller Park. Large cement slabs litter the ground, and smaller pieces are still tumbling down the wreckage. Agitated voices and sirens puncture the background noise as the reporter on the scene delivers the details of the story.
At 5:15 p.m., Big Blue was lifting another 400-ton roof panel to the top of the stadium, 200 feet above, when the crane began to buckle. Soon the roof panel swung and crashed through the panels already in place before plowing through the right-field wall of the near-complete stadium. The crane came crashing through the wall next.
The crane operator shouted “Get out! Get everybody out of here!” as pieces of his rig began to snap before his eyes. But there was nowhere to go for the three men working up in another crane bucket when the giant collapsing arm of Big Blue severed their crane’s line, sending them plummeting to their deaths. The reporter says high winds may have caused the crane to collapse.
Selig is stunned. Nothing prepares you for a moment like this, and his mind bounces between the tragedy unfolding before him and the job he still has to do. Selig is no engineer, but this looks bad. The cleanup alone will take months, and so much work has to be repeated. And if the accident was indeed caused by high winds, there will be plenty of questions asked about why the crane was even in operation.
Opening next spring—or anytime next season—is now in doubt. Insurance will cover most of the team’s financial losses, but nothing can bring back the three men who lost their lives. Reporters are saying that police will search the crash site for any others who might have been injured or lost.
“I’ll be there soon,” he tells Wendy. He’ll rush over to the stadium in a few minutes and stay as late as he can. But it’s Wendy who will have to comfort the families tomorrow, deal with the Stadium Board, talk to the media, and answer all the hard questions.
Selig will still fly out to Seattle tomorrow, as planned. He is the Commissioner of baseball now, not just the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. And he has a game to sell.