BUD SELIG IS walking the neatly groomed grounds of Gainey Ranch, the upscale community in Scottsdale where he and Sue keep their winter home. It’s early evening, and he’s wearing what he always wears on his walks: a blazer over a white shirt, dark slacks, and black dress loafers.
The Commissioner loves this time of year in Arizona. It’s January 16, just a few weeks before pitchers and catchers report for spring training. He’s been coming to spring training in Arizona ever since his father helped him scrape together $300,000 to purchase a tiny stake in a baseball team 35 years ago. Buying into a team that trained in Arizona was a nice little bonus. There’s something about the warm, dry air here that invigorated him then, and invigorates him even more now that he’s 69.
But spring training is not what’s on Bud’s mind tonight. Just a few hours ago his daughter Wendy stood before the assembled media at Miller Park and announced that the Selig Era will end as soon as a buyer is found for their team. If all goes as planned, this spring training will be Selig’s last as owner and managing partner of the Milwaukee Brewers.
It’s time—probably long past time. And this announcement should make it that much easier for his surrogates to get him a contract extension, an effort that began soon after Selig announced his intention to walk away when his current deal expired at the end of 2006.
Selig’s held on to the Brewers for the same two reasons that drive so many of his baseball decisions: money and Wendy. In 2001, the Brewers’ debt was $171 million—as much as, if not more than, the team was worth. Cash calls, payroll cuts, and growing revenue checks have whittled the debt down to a more manageable $110 million. Industry analysts figure the franchise and its one-third stake in Miller Park is worth between $180 million and $200 million. Selig is hoping for closer to $220 million.
But this decision is as much about Wendy as it is about money—maybe more. Bud always wanted to give his daughter the chance to run his team, but the experience has not worked out the way they’d hoped. She’s been hammered for everything that has gone wrong these last 11 years while rarely—if ever—receiving credit when things go right. It’s Wendy who oversaw the construction of their jewel of a ballpark and then negotiated the 30-year lease that will keep the franchise in Milwaukee long after her father sells the team. And she’ll leave a farm system that ranks as one of the game’s very best.
But the Brewers haven’t had a winning season after Wendy took over in September of 1992, and attendance is back to pre–Miller Park levels. Hiring Dean Taylor as general manager was a mistake, and signing injury-prone Jeffrey Hammonds to the richest free agent deal in team history was a disaster. None of this did anything to shake the notion that Wendy got where she was solely because her father owned the team or that her father was still making many of the team decisions. And now too many fans are calling his budget-cutting daughter a liar—or worse.
Yes, the time is definitely right to sell the team, just as it’s the right time to finally move the Expos out of Montreal and sell them, too, ending Selig’s other conflict of interest. He told the owners two days ago that a decision should be reached by the All-Star break, though most already assume—correctly—that the Expos will soon call Washington, D.C., home.
And Selig is oh so close to getting everyone to sign off on Frank McCourt’s purchase of the Dodgers from Rupert Murdoch, even though the Boston parking lot mogul appears to be seriously undercapitalized. But Murdoch wants out, McCourt is the only one willing to meet the $430 million asking price, and Bud wants to keep Rupert happy. Given Murdoch’s reach—Fox will pay MLB $416.7 million per year to broadcast their games through 2006, and his regional sports networks are paying 19 teams for their TV rights—it’s easy to see why.
All this would make tonight’s walk a pleasure but for that damned IRS agent and the Balco prosecutors out in San Francisco who appear determined to make Selig—and everyone else in baseball—utterly miserable. While Wendy was delivering her news today in Milwaukee, federal agents were serving the subpoena that Selig and Don Fehr have been waiting for since last November, one that confirmed their worst fears. No longer content to chase after Bonds and the other 10 players connected to Balco, the government is asking for every test result and urine sample taken in 2003, all 1,438 of them.
Which means the 104 players who tested positive are now in jeopardy. The window into the secret world that will define the rest of Selig’s career—and Fehr’s as well—has just been pushed wide open.
Union and MLB lawyers are still formulating a legal strategy to combat the new subpoena when the President takes them all by surprise on January 20, highlighting steroid abuse in his State of the Union address. In a speech that repeatedly raises the specter of terror attacks, the President calls out athletes using steroids right between calls to increase testing for illicit drugs in high schools and double the funding of abstinence programs to combat sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers.
“Athletics play such an important role in our society, but unfortunately, some in professional sports are not setting much of an example,” the President says. “So tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches, and players to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now.”
Three weeks later, Attorney General John Ashcroft announces a 42-count indictment of Bonds’ trainer Greg Anderson and three other Balco defendants before TV cameras from the steps of the Justice Department. The government drives the point home again on February 17, releasing documents showing baseball is at the heart of the Balco investigation. And on March 1, the first of a steady stream of leaks appears in the San Francisco Chronicle, which reports the government has information that shows Anderson gave Balco’s designer steroids to Bonds, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, and three other baseball players.
It’s no surprise when John McCain summons Selig and Fehr to Washington for another hearing on March 10. The Senator is at his self-righteous best, accusing both men of “aiding and abetting cheaters” and issuing one threat after another. “Your failure to commit to addressing this issue straight on and immediately,” he thunders, “will motivate this committee to search for legislative remedies.”
Fehr, looking pale and wan from gallbladder surgery he had two weeks ago, pushes right back. He reminds McCain that union members should not be required to forfeit their Fourth Amendment right to privacy because they play major league baseball. He insists the sport’s nascent drug testing program is working and tells McCain the government should clean up its act and get steroid precursor supplements like Andro off the market—a door, Fehr reminds McCain, Congress opened when it deregulated supplements in 1994.
Selig can’t help but wonder about Fehr’s tactics. If only the union leader had listened when Bud wanted to install testing with punitive measures as early as 2001, the season he started drug testing in the minor leagues. Instead, Fehr insisted on survey testing first, then a treatment-based approach—rehab, fines, identities of users kept secret—if and when the random testing threshold was crossed. Maybe if Fehr had listened then, they wouldn’t be sitting in Washington now.
But here they are, and Bud has his own strategy: throw the union under the bus. Yes, he tells McCain, he’s ready to institute random testing year-round. Yes, he thinks players should be suspended for the first violation. And yes, he knows why they don’t have either policy in place.
“We obviously accepted less than we wanted,” Selig testifies about the drug agreement with the union in baseball’s 2002 contract. “In my judgment as the Commissioner, we had pushed the MLBPA as far as it would go without a strike. The clubs, whatever their conviction, were profoundly concerned about the impact of another strike.”
Selig leaves Washington and quickly issues another gag order, this one forbidding any baseball official from discussing steroids. He keeps the pressure on Fehr by having stories leaked that he’s thinking about using his “best interests of baseball” powers to unilaterally impose a new testing program. Baseball’s lawyers know that any change in the drug agreement has to be collectively bargained, but these stories are good politics.
The real bargaining is going on between the union and the Balco prosecutors over the government’s subpoena of the 2003 drug tests. At the government’s request, the union’s Gene Orza writes a white paper outlining the MLBPA’s position, stressing the confidentiality guarantee in baseball’s collective bargaining agreement, and raising concerns about violating the privacy rights of players not connected to Balco. The government ignores it.
In February, the union and Comprehensive Drug Testing had assured the government in writing that it would protect the subpoenaed records until the two sides resolve the dispute on their own, or until it is decided by the courts. The head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division wrote to CDT’s legal counsel advising him the government accepted this assurance. A month later, the government served another subpoena for the 11 players with ties to Balco but did not retract the subpoena for all the records.
This is where things stand on April 7. With no compromise reached, the union files a motion in the federal court for the Northern District of California to quash both of the government’s subpoenas for the 2003 tests. The next day, lead investigator Jeff Novitzky gets in his car and drives 394 miles to Long Beach, where he asks a judge for a warrant to search CDT for the records of the 10 players tied to Balco. (One player was found not to have any ties to Balco.)
The key to Novitzky’s request: his stated concern that CDT could conceal, alter, or destroy these records.
Novitzky fails to tell the judge about CDT’s written guarantee to protect the records he is seeking. Nor does he mention the hearing scheduled to consider the union’s motion to dismiss the subpoenas for these records. Based on what he knows—and doesn’t know—the judge grants the search warrant for the tests of the 10 ballplayers connected to Balco. He also instructs Novitzky to return to CDT any data he might find that does not involve these specifically named men.
Novitzky then leads 11 armed agents into the CDT office and serves the warrant. After several calls between CDT’s counsel and government lawyers, the company’s CEO hands Novitzky a list of test results for the 10 players named in the warrant. Not good enough, says Novitzky, who wants the computer expert on his team to search the entire CDT computer system. Before long, the agent is clicking through directories and making copies on disks.
When he is done, the government has possession of 11 disks containing the 2003 drug tests for every Major League Baseball player as well as results for a few NFL and NHL teams, several athletic events, and a handful of private businesses. In all, Novitzky walks out with more than 4,100 files—2,911 of which have nothing to do with Major League Baseball—completely ignoring the order of the judge who issued the search warrant.
The union and CDT file a flurry of motions to get back the seized files while the government asks for search warrants to get information they already have in their possession. And after promising to keep confidential the names of the 104 players who tested positive, the government attaches a list of their names to several of its motions, needlessly risking the privacy of the players involved.
One of those lists is sent to the union, another to MLB. It is the first time anyone at the union or MLB sees the names of the players who failed their drug tests, and several of the names stun them: Alex Rodriguez. David Ortiz. Manny Ramirez. Sammy Sosa. And more. This is no longer just about Bonds and Giambi. Orza and Manfred soon begin talks about suspending drug tests for the players on the government list until each player can be told he is a potential target of a government investigation.
No one at the union or MLB ever dreamed that a federal agent would seize their confidential drug testing results—there is simply no precedent for such an act. It is the first indication that the government’s investigation is more about punishing baseball players than stopping the distribution of steroids—and it won’t be the last.
George Steinbrenner stands on the tarmac of the private-plane runway at Tampa Airport as the chartered jet carrying his son Hal, Brian Cashman, Joe Torre, and communications director Rick Cerrone taxis to a stop. The four men are flying in from New York, where they joined the welcoming party for Alex Rodriguez at Yankee Stadium on their newest superstar’s first day in pinstripes. Now the jet’s passenger door swings open, and as the four men climb down the portable stairway, the team’s 73-year-old owner greets each one with a big smile and warm words.
“You men really did a great job today, a great job,” says Steinbrenner, his blue Windbreaker zipped tight in the cool early evening air. “I’m really proud of all of you. Really proud.”
None of these men can fully believe their good fortune. Wasn’t it only one month ago when incumbent third baseman Aaron Boone blew out the ACL of his left knee playing basketball, leaving Cashman desperate for a replacement with spring training looming? Was it a stroke of luck or fate that put Cashman and Rodriguez side by side on the dais of the Baseball Writers banquet in New York nine days later, where an idea was born?
Cashman knew Alex was still desperate to leave Texas after a trade sending him to Boston fell through, but he wasn’t sure if the Gold Glove shortstop was desperate enough to shift to third base. The longer Cashman chatted with the league’s MVP, who talked at length of his unhappiness playing for the hapless Rangers, the more probable the idea appeared. Dozens of phone calls shrouded in secrecy followed, with few besides Cashman, Texas GM John Hart, and Rodriguez in the loop.
And by the time Cashman was prepared to go to George with the deal, almost three weeks later, Alex was ready to change positions, Hart was ready to take Alfonso Soriano in return, and Rangers owner Tom Hicks was willing to pay $67 million of the $179 million balance remaining for the last seven years of Rodriguez’s contract.
Steinbrenner didn’t need much convincing, even if adding Rodriguez would push the Yankees’ 2004 payroll past $180 million—though he wanted to make sure Jeter understood his shortstop job was safe. Both George and Cashman told the team’s captain there would be no quarterback controversy on this team. And when Selig reluctantly blessed the deal on February 16—“I will not allow cash transfers of this magnitude to become the norm,” Selig promises, “but given the quality of the talent moving in both directions, I have decided to approve the transaction”—the Yankees had done what the Red Sox could not: land the game’s top player.
George sent his son Hal to New York for the announcement—as big as any in Yankees history—while he watched the media conference on YES at the Yankees’ minor league complex. And now he’s happy that everyone is back home safe.
“Your rental cars are right over there,” says Steinbrenner, who had the staff bring the cars to the airport rather than making the travelers taxi over to Legends Field, as everyone else usually does. The four men can only say thanks, raise an eyebrow at this small display of kindness, and wonder how long the Boss’ good humor will last.
George will still have temper tantrums, and he’ll still bluster at staff meetings. But it’s a different George Steinbrenner who presides over matters big and small this spring training. That becomes abundantly clear when he stops in Joe Torre’s office a few days into camp. Their relationship throughout 2003 had been frosty, and the two men had not spoken since season’s end. But George’s mood is noticeably different when he asks his lame-duck manager what he wants to do after this season.
“I’d like to manage a little longer,” Torre says.
“Good,” Steinbrenner says. “Steve [Swindal] will talk it over with you.”
A day after regulars report, George is in his customized golf cart—Yankees blue, GMS plates—driving around camp slowly enough to good-naturedly answer a host of reporters’ questions.
How is his health?
“I’m fine—you all think I’m going to die,” he says. “Everybody’s coming up to me—‘Sign this baseball.’ You want one of the last autographs.”
Does he think Jason Giambi—who reported to camp 20 pounds lighter than last season—or Gary Sheffield has taken steroids?
“No. They know how I feel about it, and I think they feel the same way.”
Is there tension between Rodriguez and Jeter? “You people need to let this drop. I don’t think it’s a nonissue—I know it’s a nonissue.”
Why is he using a golf cart to get around?
“I’m slowing down, and I have bad knees,” he says, smiling. “Okay, boys, that’s it for today. I have work to do.”
George loves having Don Mattingly back in uniform as the team’s hitting coach, and he’s pleased Joe Girardi is Torre’s new bench coach, replacing Don Zimmer, who he detests. Writers churn out “happy George” stories, and not even five straight losses in spring training games—which a year ago would have meant a slew of midnight meetings—can alter his mood.
“I’m not bothered,” Steinbrenner says. “I think Joe knows where we are.”
He’s thrilled when the YankeeNets partnership officially ends on March 23, meaning he can buy back shares in the Yankees. On the same day, an arbitrator rules that Cablevision must carry YES on its basic tier through 2009, a decision that almost doubles his team’s audience and substantially improves his bottom line.
But privately, he’s beginning to worry. There are days when it’s more than his bad knees and the weariness of age that trouble Steinbrenner. Days when he’s not sure of his decisions; when he tries but can’t remember what he did a few hours ago, the name of a friend, or the right word for what he wants to say. Worse are the moments when he can’t control his emotions, when the tears well up, then spill out and run down his cheeks.
Aren’t these the things that were happening to his friend Otto at the end? None of these things happen every day, but they’re happening often enough, and George doesn’t know why or when they will occur.
Like Opening Day at Yankee Stadium. It’s an hour or so before pregame ceremonies when Cerrone drives Steinbrenner in a golf cart toward a makeshift set in left-center field for interviews with sportscaster Warner Wolf and news anchors Dana Tyler and Ernie Anastos of WCBS. The Boss is in a fine mood, despite his team losing two of their first four games in Tampa. Hey, if you can’t get excited about Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, he says, when can you get excited?
West Point cadets are already lined up in the outfield, where they will unfurl a huge American flag for the national anthem. Steinbrenner waves to fans chanting “Thank you, George” as he takes his place on the set next to Wolf, who he’s known for years. Steinbrenner is wearing large dark glasses, and it’s soon apparent he is fighting back tears.
“George, first of all, is your health okay?” Wolf asks. “You’re looking good.”
“I’m okay,” says Steinbrenner, whose voice cracks and lips quiver as he tries to go on. Dana Tyler pats him softly on the shoulder to comfort him.
“I just feel pretty emotional about this team and its players,” George tells her, “and I hope they feel the same way.”
Steinbrenner tells Wolf that Bud Selig is doing a great job. “I just wish he wouldn’t take so much money from me,” he says. He gets through a few more questions before mentioning that he received a phone call from Roger Clemens yesterday.
“What did he say to you?” Anastos asks.
“He said, ‘I just want to thank you… for making me… a Yankee,” says Steinbrenner, sobbing. “I said… ‘You were a great player.’ ”
Hours later, after the Yankees beat the White Sox, 3–1, George is beaming when he meets with the media. “I’m having a great time,” he says, his voice strong and steady.
The next day the Yankees announce that Steinbrenner has given Torre a three-year, $19.2 million contract extension, keeping the 63-year-old manager a Yankee through 2007. But the news does little to spark the team, which loses nine of its next 14 games. Six of the losses were to Boston—including three straight at the Stadium—but there are no words of panic coming out of Tampa.
“I have a great manager in Joe Torre and general manager in Brian Cashman, and have confidence in both of them,” Steinbrenner says in a statement issued by Howard Rubenstein.
It’s during this stretch when Rubenstein, who has all but supplanted the Boss as the public voice of the Yankees, introduces George to Juliet Macur, a young reporter from the New York Times assigned to write a profile of Steinbrenner. After grilling Macur on her background—Where did she grow up? What did her parents do? Where did she go to school?—he tells Macur to set up an appointment with his secretary.
A week later Macur walks into a conference room overlooking Legends Field in Tampa with Steinbrenner, who pulls out a chair for her at the conference table. “Can I get you anything?” he asks. “Lunch? Coffee?”
Macur arrives expecting the tyrant she’s grown up reading about. Instead she discovers a man who is open about his flaws, full of regrets, and surprisingly vulnerable.
He tells Macur he is afraid to die, asking her several times how much longer he’ll live. “To 75?” George asks. “To 80?”
He talks about all the funerals he attends—“You see your friends die, you think about dying yourself.” He tells her about his regrets over his temper tantrums—“Guess that will be my legacy”—and the calls he still gets from reporters. “All they’re looking for is controversy,” George says. “I don’t like that. They twist my words.”
He forgets the name of his longtime secretary Judith, calling her Rita, his mother’s name. He tells Macur he stays at the Carlyle when he’s in New York, though he’s lived in the same suite at the Regency for decades. And he admits it’s now a struggle to control his emotions. “Well, I don’t cry all the time,” says George, who cries three times in the two-hour session. Macur has to choke back her own tears several times, too.
He tells her he loved his father but that Henry Steinbrenner was a hard, unrelenting man who always focused on his son’s failures. “I’ll never forget what my father said after he heard I bought the Yankees,” he tells Macur. “ ‘Well, the kid finally did something right.’ ” The “kid” was 42 years old.
It’s a story George has told often, but it’s several moments before he can continue. And when he does, he speaks with regret about verbally abusing his own four children, especially his two sons. It’s not lost on him that he has become the father he so resented.
When the interview is done, George walks Macur to the door and surprises her with a huge bear hug. “You’re nice,” he says.
Steinbrenner’s team breaks out of its early slump, and by the time Jeter’s average breaks .200, on May 11, they’ve won 10 of 13 games. Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, and Hideki Matsui’s bats are red hot for the entire month, and the team moves past the Red Sox and into first place in the AL East on June 1, where they’ll stay the rest of the season.
Things are back to normal in the Bronx.
Everywhere but the owner’s box.
Alex Rodriguez swings and rifles the ball into right-center field, the deepest part of Houston’s Minute Maid Park, driving in David Ortiz before he pulls into third with a stand-up triple. A-Rod’s RBI pushes the AL’s lead to 7–1 in the top of the 4th inning of the 2004 All-Star Game, all but ensuring a win and World Series home-field advantage.
Bud Selig takes this all in from his box next to the NL dugout, where he’s waiting to be introduced to the crowd of 41,886 at the end of this inning. Selig would like the score to be a little closer, but it’s hard not to be caught up in the excitement at this stunning retractable-roof stadium, which the taxpayers of Houston built for his friend Drayton McLane, the billionaire owner of the Astros.
How can he not be enthralled by the action he’s already seen in this All-Star Game? After almost 10 years of record-breaking performances, the love affair the Commissioner and fans have with the long ball has never been stronger. This game is but a reflection of what they’ve been enjoying all season.
In Boston, Ortiz (22 home runs, 76 RBI) and teammate Manny Ramirez (26–77–.342) are keeping the Red Sox on the heels of the Yankees. The Boston duo’s doppelgangers reside in St. Louis, where Scott Rolen (18–77–.342) and Albert Pujols (21–57–.304) have powered the Cards to a league-best 55 wins. The Phillies’ Jim Thome has 27 homers, top among the seven All-Stars with at least 20. Indeed, there have been so many off-the-charts offensive performances that it’s easy to overlook 39-year-old Randy Johnson’s perfect game back in May.
But there is no overlooking Barry Bonds, who at two weeks shy of 40 is still the most feared hitter in the game. His numbers at the break—23–48–.365—can’t tell the whole story, because most teams have just about stopped pitching to him. He’s already been intentionally walked 71 times—26 more intentional walks than any player not named Barry Bonds has ever received in an entire season. He’s averaging a home run every 8.3 at bats, has struck out just 19 times, and his on-base percentage is an unworldly .628.
If the constant stream of anonymous sources linking Bonds to steroids is bothering him, it certainly doesn’t show. Nor is it bothering the fans. The Giants are averaging 40,200 fans a game at home—96.8 percent of SBC Park—and 36,943 on the road, trailing only the Yankees and the Cubs.
Business is good everywhere outside Montreal, where the Expos are playing their last season in Canada. Every Red Sox and Cubs game was sold out by the third week of April. The Yankees are the leader of nine teams on pace to draw more than 3 million fans. Another 11 teams will draw at least 2 million—including the Brewers.
But no one is having a more rewarding season than the game’s Commissioner. By late June, four well-heeled bidders emerged for his Brewers, and the franchise that plays in the game’s smallest market is certain to fetch at least $200 million. Later in July he’ll have the best seat in the house when Paul Molitor, the last true bright spot for the team in Milwaukee, is inducted into the Hall of Fame. And the Expos should bring in at least twice what the Brewers are expected to get when Selig puts them on the market this fall. No one is questioning the Commissioner’s decision to buy the team now.
Selig is also threading the needle on the steroid controversy remarkably well, building his cover story even as the tale continues to grow. While the union works feverishly to get back the 2003 drug tests illegally seized by the feds, Selig has been telling Congress that he’s all for tougher testing and bigger penalties. And we’d have a tougher program if only the union would get out of the way, Selig keeps repeating.
But the union has legitimate concerns. The government shattered baseball’s promise of confidentiality to its players when Novitzky raided CDT. In response, MLB and the union quietly decided to upgrade the program’s security, which delayed testing for all players until July 8—a decision they did not announce, leaving players to wonder when they would be tested. Union lawyers are working on how and when they will notify the players who tested positive in 2003 that the government is holding their drug tests.
But now Bonds has just popped up to end the National League’s three-run rally in the 4th, and it’s time for Selig to walk out to the TV camera set up along the first baseline. Waiting for him is Roger Clemens with his wife Debbie and their four sons. Roger wants to be surrounded by family when Selig presents him with the Commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award in front of the hometown fans.
“Roger, your 21-year Hall of Fame career has been highlighted by many awards, honors, and remarkable performances,” says Selig, his words echoing throughout Minute Maid Park. “Your name will always be mentioned with the greatest pitchers in the history of this game.”
Selig pauses to let Roger enjoy the huge roar from the fans.
“Roger, you’ve done a lot for so many, and all of us are very proud of you,” Selig says. He hands the Rocket a silver-and-gold trophy, then reaches up and puts his right arm around Clemens’ thick neck for a heartfelt hug.
The chase for records and milestones resumes when the season starts again two days later. Clemens wins his last six decisions, lifting his record to 18–4 and pitching the Astros into the playoffs. He’ll become the oldest player to win the Cy Young Award, winning it a record seventh time. Greg Maddux collects his 300th win on August 7, and Ichiro Suzuki gets his 200th hit on August 26. He’ll finish with 262 to break George Sisler’s 83-year-old record for hits in a season. Sammy Sosa hits his 574th career home run—seventh on the all-time list—in the Cubs’ last game of the season. The Dodgers’ free-agent-to-be Adrian Beltre surprises everyone by smacking 26 second-half homers, more than the career-high 23 he hit all last season.
But no one closes the season quite like Barry and Bud. On September 17, Bonds takes San Diego’s Jake Peavy deep for home run No. 700. A week later, two employers from Quest Diagnostics show up at SBC Park to administer Barry’s drug test. “I’m glad this is finally happening,” Bonds says. “They’ll get the results, and it will clear my name.” A few hours later, Bonds hits the second pitch he sees off Dodgers starter Odalis Perez for his 44th home run.
Bonds finishes the season with 45 home runs—leaving him 11 shy of the Babe—and hits .362 to win his second batting title in three seasons. He sets records for walks (232), intentional walks (120), and on-base percentage (.609). It will surprise no one when he’s named MVP for the fourth straight season and seventh time overall, something no one in baseball has ever done.
Watching—and worrying—over the game’s best hitter is the Commissioner, who is still campaigning for tougher drug testing in mid-August, when the owners make a big announcement: they’ve persuaded Selig to stay past 2006. All it took was a three-year extension averaging $18 million a year plus continued use of a private plane and other perks.
“We no longer have the internal bickering among owners—that’s the thing I’m most proud of,” says Selig, who has watched revenues grow to $4.1 billion, more than three times what they were when he took over 12 years ago. “I must admit that when I look at it today, you almost have to pinch yourself.”
Selig has that same feeling a month later, when the Brewers announce that Mark Attanasio, an investment firm owner from LA, will soon become the next owner of the Brewers. Attanasio arrived late to the bidding but walked away the winner when he agreed to pay $223 million for the Commissioner’s team—$43 million more than Arte Moreno paid for the Angels just one year ago. At that price, Selig will make a tidy profit from his 28.6 percent stake in the Brewers.
And just a few days later he ties up another loose end: the Expos are moving to Washington. “This was a team that had to be moved,” Selig says in a teleconference from his Park Avenue office. “We knew it had to relocate. This was a team we were anxious to get rid of.”
A big contract extension, the sale of the Brewers, relocating the Expos—Selig has checked off almost everything on his to-do list for 2004. All that remains: a plan to insulate himself from the taint of steroids.