THE VERY PRIVATE Steinbrenner family says their public good-bye to the Boss in a grand affair at Yankee Stadium on September 20. Bud and Sue Selig escort Joan Steinbrenner onto the field, where she joins her four children—Hal, Hank, Jenny, and Jessica—to watch a four-minute video that receives a warm reception from the 47,437 fans in Steinbrenner’s $1.5-plus billion Stadium. “When you put the pinstripes on, you’re not just putting on a baseball uniform” is George’s opening line played over a montage of his career. “You’re wearing tradition.”
Moments later, Joan is riding in a golf cart with Yogi Berra, part of a procession out to Monument Park, the open-air museum in center field. Don Mattingly and Joe Torre are part of it all, too, making their first appearances here since leaving after the 2007 season. Alex Rodriguez and manager Joe Girardi lead the entire Yankees team to the stairs and platform at the outfield fence.
The family takes their place between the commemorative stones for Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, facing a white banner with the Yankees top-hat logo at its center. Both Steinbrenner daughters fight back tears as Joan steps forward and pulls down the white curtain, unveiling a plaque featuring George’s likeness carved in bronze and his legacy written beside it.
“A true visionary who changed the game of baseball forever,” the tribute reads, noting the seven World Series titles and 11 pennants won in his 37 years running the Yankees. “He was considered the most influential owner in all of sports.”
The plaque is huge—seven feet wide, five feet high, and 760 pounds, even without its marble base—and immediately sparks a mini controversy. No one questions George’s place among the game’s giants, but in the days that follow, fans and reporters wonder why Steinbrenner warrants a memorial twice as large as those for DiMaggio, Mantle, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig. If nothing else, it makes for a lively debate while the defending champions settle for second place behind the Rays and the wild-card slot, sweep the Twins in the ALDS, then fall short of the World Series in a six-game ALCS loss to Texas.
But the critics miss the point. The size of George’s monument is not just about the Babe and the Iron Horse, or Joe D. and the Mick, beloved Yankees all. The giant plaque is about how the family will remember George and the impact he had on each of their lives. By that measure, Monument Park’s newest tribute may even be a bit too small.
No one understands this better than Hal Steinbrenner, now firmly entrenched as George’s successor. Early on, George’s younger son showed he understood his role when he cornered the free agent market and won a championship for his fading father in 2009. But a very different test lies immediately ahead: easing the team’s aging icons—responsible for five championships and rehabilitating George’s image—into retirement while still winning titles.
It won’t be easy. Jorge Posada’s catching skills, never great, have declined significantly, so the 39-year-old vet will unhappily join a crowd at DH in 2011. Mariano Rivera is still superb at 40, but Derek Jeter is 36 and hit .270—47 points below his career average—while 38-year-old Andy Pettitte missed 57 games in 2010 with a groin injury that wouldn’t heal. All but Posada are free agents, and Steinbrenner, who’s staring at a $200-plus million payroll, wants to re-sign each one. But for how much? For how many years? And in what roles?
The young Yankees boss gets off to a bumpy start on November 2, when he ends a rare radio interview by saying negotiations with Jeter “could get messy.” And they do. The two sides squabble over money—Hal wants to cut Jeter’s pay, Derek wants a raise for all he’s accomplished—and a month-long war of words between Jeter’s agent Casey Close and Steinbrenner’s GM Brian Cashman fills the tabloids.
In the end, Steinbrenner signs off on a three-year, $51 million deal—a slight cut from the average $18.9 million Jeter had earned the past 10 years—with the player’s option for a final year at $8 million. He then tells Jeter and Cashman to patch things up. But Jeter, who still holds a grudge as well as he lines singles to right, has different ideas. “This turned into a big public thing,” he says. “That is something I was not happy about. I let my feelings be known.”
Things get uglier with Jeter’s best friend Posada, who’s hitting .165 as the full-time DH on May 14 when manager Joe Girardi pencils him in to bat ninth against Boston. Posada tells Girardi he can’t play, unleashing frustration on both sides. Cashman goes on Fox’s national broadcast and blasts his veteran, and Posada lashes back to reporters after the game. The tabloids feast for a week, then move on, and Posada says good-bye with little fanfare in a media conference on January 24, 2012.
Steinbrenner does a better job with Pettitte and Rivera come the 2013 season. Pettitte, who retired in 2011 only to return for the last two seasons, bows out in a quiet meeting with reporters. Rivera, who appeared in nine games in 2012 before tearing up his right knee shagging fly balls in batting practice, is honored at every stop during the Yankees season. The Twins give him a rocking chair made from bats they broke trying to hit his cutter. The Dodgers give him a fishing rod—Rivera’s father was a fisherman—and the A’s hand him a surfboard. All three teams pledge $10,000 to the Mariano Rivera Foundation. So does Toronto.
Yankee Stadium is decked out with stars past and present on September 22 for an emotional Mariano Rivera Day. Among the many gifts: Yankees President Randy Levine hands Mo a $100,000 check for Rivera’s foundation; Hal and his wife Christina hand him a beautiful Waterford crystal replica of his glove. Rivera thanks his teammates, his family, and his fans when it’s his time to speak. He singles out only one Yankee.
“The man I wish was here is George Steinbrenner,” Mo says. “I love him so much, and I do miss him.”
There are no postseason games for these 83–77 Yankees, though no one can blame Rivera. At 43, he saved 44 games, won six, and posted a 2.11 ERA. When David Robertson, Mo’s heir, records the final out of the season, Rivera’s countdown to Cooperstown officially begins.
In between the send-offs, Steinbrenner sells a piece of the YES Network in a deal so big it can only make Bud Selig shudder. On November 20, 2012, the Yankees sell 9 percent of their 34 percent stake to Fox, which also buys 40 percent from Goldman Sachs and the network’s other major shareholders. The deal values YES at $3.4 billion—almost double what the team is worth. Fox also spent heavily to keep Steinbrenner’s Yankees on YES for 30 years: a $500 million bonus and yearly payments that start at $85 million and surpass $300 million in the final seasons of the deal.
The Yankees, who’ve paid upwards of a combined $1.5 billion in revenue sharing, which started in ’96, and luxury taxes, which were phased in beginning a year later, lobbied for relief when a new labor contract was negotiated in November of 2011. No deal, said Selig, who instead offered up an inducement for Steinbrenner to cut his spending. Any big market team with a payroll under the luxury tax threshold of $189 million by 2014—read: the Yankees—would get a revenue sharing check they would not otherwise receive.
Given the tax savings—the Yankees have paid 92 percent of all luxury taxes collected, including $18.9 million in 2012—Selig thought he’d given Hal a strong incentive to cut payroll. And for two years, getting below $189 million was Steinbrenner’s public mantra. Indeed, he passed on superstars Josh Hamilton and Albert Pujols and ignored Cuban star Yasiel Puig when each hit the market.
But missing the playoffs in 2013 translated into the team’s lowest attendance—3.3 million—since opening the new Stadium. More alarming, YES lost a third of its viewers. So Steinbrenner reversed course, signing free agents Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, and Carlos Beltran for almost $300 million combined. He gave $12 million to Jeter, back for one final season after missing a year recovering from a broken ankle.
Then he wooed Japanese superstar Masahiro Tanaka to New York, handing the 25-year-old pitcher a seven-year, $155 million deal. Even with the loss of All-Star Robinson Cano, who left when Steinbrenner refused to match Seattle’s 10-year, $240 million offer, the Yankees entered 2014 with a $203 million payroll. So much for reining in this Steinbrenner.
There was no repeat of the 2009 magic, however—no 28th World Series title, not even a berth in the expanded postseason. Instead, injuries sideline four-fifths of the rotation for most of the year, including the impressive Tanaka (13–5, 141 strikeouts, and only 21 walks in 136.1 innings, a 2.77 ERA), who missed 74 days with a partially torn ligament in his right arm. Several key players lost big chunks of time, others just looked old or tired as the team struggled to score more than three runs a game.
Indeed, the only highlights are callbacks to the past. The Yankees give first Tino Martinez then Paul O’Neill their own plaques in Monument Park. And they retire Joe Torre’s No. 6 on August 23—four weeks after the former manager failed to thank George Steinbrenner in his Hall of Fame induction speech.
Then the big day: September 7, when the Yankees honor Jeter. The ceremony unfolds much like those before it: old Yankees stars reappear, this time joined by Derek’s good friend Cal Ripken and his fellow Nike pitchman Michael Jordan. Highlights dance on the video screen, a reminder for the 48,110 fans what their favorite son looked like before age and injury reduced him to the average player he’s been all season. Hal and Christina lead a group of Steinbrenner grandchildren out of the dugout to present Jeter with a Waterford crystal trophy etched with Jeter’s final season logo.
Steinbrenner watches Jeter single in the 1st, one of only four hits in a 2–0 loss to the Royals that pushes his team closer to postseason elimination. The official end comes 17 days later, marking the first time the Yankees failed to reach the postseason in consecutive seasons since George returned from Fay Vincent’s suspension in 1993. Jeter runs out to shortstop at Yankee Stadium for the last time one night later, fighting back tears all game before smacking a walk-off RBI single in the bottom of the 9th for a 6–5 win.
On September 28 in Boston, Jeter plays his last game, leaving to a standing ovation after an RBI infield single in the 3rd inning. His final numbers—3,465 hits (No. 6 on the all-time list), 260 home runs, 358 stolen bases, a .310 average, and five World Series titles—will soon be engraved on a plaque in Cooperstown.
And now the last member of the Yankees dynasty is gone, a fading memory for all who don’t understand how important Jeter’s team was to repairing the damage done to baseball by the self-inflicted wound that was the 1994 season. The money is there for Hal Steinbrenner to rebuild his team, but 2014 showed it takes more than money to build a champion.
Will Hal get as lucky as George and find a Jeter, a Rivera, a Bernie Williams, and more, all at the same time? Does he have the same drive his father had to win year after year? Will delegating more power to Yankees President Randy Levine and GM Brian Cashman prove as successful—and entertaining—as the Boss’ one-man show?
Selig and the game’s owners were loath to admit how much they needed George after 1994. As Selig prepares to leave the stage, baseball might soon discover it needs George Steinbrenner now more than ever.
Don Fehr never could sit still. So it is no surprise that he agrees to lend a hand, free of charge, when the woebegone NHL Players Association comes calling at the end of 2009, soon after Fehr left baseball. Nor is it surprising that Fehr says yes when the hockey players ask him to be their leader in December of 2010. With Commissioner Gary Bettman once again looking for big concessions when their labor deal expires after another season, the NHL players need a fighter. At 62, Fehr still wakes up ready to brawl.
The battle commences at 12:01 a.m. on September 16, 2012, when Bettman makes good on his promise to lock out the players after two months of fruitless talks. For Fehr, it’s déjà vu all over again. The owners, who got a salary cap after a lockout wiped out the entire 2004–5 season, insist they need a bigger piece of the revenue pie and an end to salary arbitration if all their teams are to survive. The players insist the big money teams should share more of the game’s $3.3 billon in revenue with their small market partners.
Both sides know the drill—there’s been a lockout in each of Bettman’s three labor negotiations since he became Commissioner in 1993—and as the shutdown enters the late fall, the owners start going after Fehr. The American labor leader doesn’t care about hockey, the owners say, all he’s interested in is money for the players. Fehr is lying to the players about our offers, they charge, the union man simply can’t be trusted.
Others know better. “The players are behind Don Fehr 100 percent,” says one NHL agent, echoing what most on the players’ side think. “He’s breathed life into the union.”
And Fehr still knows how to keep his players united. Every player is welcome at negotiating sessions, and Fehr makes sure the union picks up the tab for their flights and accommodations. One day it’s superstar Sidney Crosby sitting at the bargaining table; another day it’s enforcer Kevin Westgarth. Any player who can’t make it to meetings can use the union’s mobile app to check on negotiations.
But there’s something different about Fehr in these negotiations, too. Always caustic and combative with Selig and baseball’s negotiators, Fehr stays calm after even his toughest sessions with Bettman. He brushes off owners’ attacks without a response. Maybe it’s the change of venue. Or perhaps it’s the sad news he hears in August—Michael Weiner has an inoperable brain tumor—or Marvin Miller’s death in November at age 95, after a three-month battle with liver cancer.
Whatever the reasons, Fehr also decides not to battle the hockey media, in marked contrast to his final years in baseball, when things were so strained many reporters stopped calling him even on the biggest stories. Instead, it’s a relaxed and patient union leader who explains the players’ position and answers every question as the lockout pushes into the New Year.
And it’s a tired but satisfied Fehr who stands with Bettman at 6 a.m. on January 6, announcing that an outline for a deal had been reached. “Hopefully, within just a very few days, the fans can get back to watching people who are skating,” Fehr says, “and not the two of us.”
Fehr receives good reviews for holding the line on revenue sharing and salary arbitration, and limiting the concessions made by his players. But his masterful performance also underscores the bitter way he left baseball, angry and dismayed that he could not prevent an overaggressive government investigation from violating the rights of more than 100 men. Nor stop an overzealous Commissioner who cared more about repairing his reputation than ruining those of dozens of players.
Fehr always defined his job as protecting the players from the worst instincts and actions of management, something he did almost without fail for 26 years until he fell short at the end. Even though the U.S. Appeals Court in California ultimately vindicated him—on September 13, 2010, it instructed the government to return the 2003 drug test results it illegally seized—Fehr knows now he was slow to react to the impact steroids were having on the game. And slow to engage the players to get to the heart of the problem. Had he reacted sooner, would fewer players have had their careers tainted—in some cases destroyed—by performance-enhancing drugs?
Perhaps. But then, how different could things have been with a partner he never felt he could trust?
It’s only 11 months later when Fehr walks toward a mound of dirt at windswept Cedar Park Cemetery in northern New Jersey, takes hold of the long wooden handle of a spade, and shovels dirt onto the coffin of Michael Weiner. On this sunny but cold November 24, 2013, Fehr performs what Jewish tradition considers the final kindness for his friend and protégé: escorting him from this world into the next. He stares into Weiner’s grave for a moment, puts the spade back in its place, and walks away so dozens of others at the grave site can do the same.
Just an hour earlier Fehr was listening to Weiner’s wife Diane Margolin address the hundreds of mourners packed into the sanctuary, aisles, and lobby of Robert Schoem’s Menorah Chapel. Bud Selig and Rob Manfred sat in the third row. Alex Rodriguez stood in a hallway. Others, many wearing Weiner’s trademark Chuck Taylor sneakers, sat on the floor. Her husband, Diane said, did not fear death. “He led a thoughtful life, one in concert with his beliefs and values,” Michael’s wife of 28 years said. “He had no regrets.”
Fehr recognized something special in Weiner early, bringing him into the union two years after Michael graduated from Harvard Law School. Before long it wasn’t hard to see Weiner as a kinder, gentler version of the man who hired him, though no less passionate about protecting the rights of his players. Fehr understood Weiner had the common touch he lacked and wisely used him to communicate with players and ease tensions with their opponents in management.
And when it was time to say good-bye in December of 2009, Fehr was confident he’d left his players well protected. But now, less than four years later, Weiner is gone, felled at 51 by the cancer discovered just 16 months ago.
A week and a half later, Tony Clark is elected the MLBPA’s new executive director, becoming the first player ever to lead the union. Fehr also spotted Clark early, recognizing Tony’s commanding presence and ability to communicate well before the big first baseman called it quits in 2009. As a player, the six-foot-eight Clark was a journeyman performer for six teams in 15 seasons. As a leader, Clark is a natural.
Fehr knows Clark has the respect and trust of the players. But he’s concerned, as are other veterans of baseball’s union movement. With the current agreement expiring on December 1, 2016, word is already circulating that several owners want to test Clark. Talk of a salary cap has even resurfaced. Clark doesn’t have the deep bench Fehr had—few on the staff Weiner was still building have any experience with a strike or lockout in baseball. And just one player will start the 2015 season having played through a work stoppage: Alex Rodriguez.
Fehr has never forgotten how Selig and the owners persuaded him to give back a year of salary arbitration in his first negotiation. Nor has he forgotten the next three seasons marred by collusion, a lockout in 1990, then the ’94 shutdown. Selig—an instigator in all these—says he’s retiring, but Fehr’s heard all that before.
Besides, Chicago’s Jerry Reinsdorf, Kansas City’s David Glass, and their allies—anti-union men all—aren’t going anywhere. And Selig’s trusted soldier Rob Manfred is all but certain to be the next Commissioner. Some things, Fehr knows, will never change. No matter who sits in his old office.
Bud Selig is fidgeting in a chair in the middle of his Milwaukee office while technicians from 60 Minutes check the lights and adjust the microphone on the lapel of his blue blazer. It’s a few weeks after November 21, 2013, the day baseball arbitrator Fredric Horowitz completed hearings on Alex Rodriguez’s appeal of Selig’s record-setting 211-game suspension for taking performance-enhancing drugs. It’s a charge the Yankees third baseman continues to deny. Horowitz is expected to announce his decision in early January, and Selig is so confident the arbitrator will uphold most if not all of the punishment he meted out on August 5, he’s ready to get an early start on his victory lap with CBS’ Scott Pelley.
“In my judgment, his actions were beyond comprehension,” Selig says when Pelley starts asking questions, “and I’m somebody who’s now been in the game over 50 years.”
“You had never seen anything like it,” Pelley repeats, no question mark intended.
“I hadn’t, no.
“And so you decided to make an example of him,” Pelley said.
“I wouldn’t call it an example,” the Commissioner answers. “I think the penalty fit what I saw as the evidence. Put all the drug things on one side and then all the things he did to impede our investigation. I think 211 games was a very fair penalty.”
To fully understand Selig’s rationale, you have to understand what else Selig tells Pelley. “This was a battle to save the game,” Selig says. “And I was determined not to lose to Rodriguez.”
So determined that his No. 2 man Rob Manfred had to talk him down from banning the 38-year-old broken-down star—A-Rod’s played only 221 of 434 games the last three seasons, hitting 34 home runs, driving in 119, and batting .274—for life. That was all the negotiating Selig was willing to do, so he turned a deaf ear when Union Executive Director Michael Weiner suggested 100 games, a penalty that would have cost Rodriguez at least $16 million in lost salary.
Would Rodriguez have stood down if Selig and Weiner had arrived at an agreement? We’ll never know.
We do know what happened next: an unsurprising, ugly, and unnecessary war of words and deeds. No one outside the three-ring circus surrounding A-Rod suggests Rodriguez—or any of the other 13 players caught using drugs supplied by the anti-aging clinic Biogenesis—should go unpunished. Or that A-Rod’s penalty should not be severe. But no one is clamoring for Alex’s head, either; not the fans who have grown used to the idea of baseball stars cheating, not the baseball media, not even the opportunists in Congress.
Taking the high road might have cut this steroid scandal short while still making a strong anti-drug statement. But the Commissioner—who has complete discretion to mete out punishment for those caught cheating by his investigative unit rather than a failed drug test—saw only the opportunity to burnish his legacy. And he went overboard. The result: a near-daily steroid narrative that overshadowed the game’s pennant races, postseason, and offseason.
Selig, who on September 23 reaffirmed his decision to retire, effective January 24, 2015, likes to frame everything in historical context. What history will show is the ninth Commissioner of baseball bungled the final act of his 22-year career.
It all started in late 2012 when a disgruntled employee at a South Florida anti-aging clinic named Biogenesis stole a boatload of client records and several of clinic owner Tony Bosch’s personal notebooks. Porter Fischer, upset that Bosch refused to repay a $4,000 loan, made numerous copies of the stolen files, one of which he gave to a free weekly newspaper. The Miami New Times’ story, published January 29, 2013, named Rodriguez as well as All-Stars Bartolo Colón, Nelson Cruz, and Melky Cabrera and other stars as Biogenesis clients and users of illegal drugs.
A battle for evidence between Selig and Rodriguez immediately followed, and representatives for both sides began blowing down doors in the seedy underbelly of Florida’s multibillion-dollar anti-aging industry. Also in play: the loyalty and cooperation of Bosch, who was already under investigation by the DEA for dealing drugs to minors, businessmen, and elite athletes, and by Florida’s Department of Health for impersonating a doctor.
Neither side covered itself in glory. According to Bosch, Alex started paying Bosch’s mounting legal fees, suggested he leave the country, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying up Bosch’s stolen records. Rodriguez called baseball’s investigation a witch hunt, stormed out of his own grievance hearing when he learned Selig wouldn’t be compelled to testify, and repeatedly denied taking illegal PEDs—something he would cop to in late January of 2014 in exchange for immunity from federal prosecution.
Rob Manfred oversaw an investigative team that numbered as many as 30 former policemen and federal agents—including a former head of the Secret Service. They offered Fischer $125,000, and then a $1,000-a-week consulting job in exchange for his trove of files—Fischer turned down both—then paid an ex-con calling himself “Bobby from Boca” $125,000 in cash for Biogenesis files containing evidence of drug use by Rodriguez and others. The head of baseball’s Department of Investigations, the man who handed “Bobby” $125,000 in cash at a South Florida diner, also had a sexual relationship with a potential witness, a nurse at Biogenesis.
Most important, Manfred filed a lawsuit against Bosch and his inner circle, claiming they interfered with baseball’s drug program by supplying drugs to players, actions MLB said cost the sport millions and injured its reputation. The suit, which many legal experts said lacked merit and would never have made it to trial, armed baseball’s agents with subpoena power and put Bosch—a coke addict already tens of thousands of dollars behind in child support payments to two ex-wives—in a financial vise. In March of 2013, Bosch flipped in exchange for baseball dropping its suit, promising to indemnify him from civil suits by any players, and paying his legal bills—which would climb past $1 million.
MLB also signed off on a bodyguard at $2,400 a day for a full year—total cost: $876,000—when Bosch claimed he feared Rodriguez would try to injure or kill him for talking to MLB. All this to add an extra 50–100 games to a suspension of a man whose importance to the game has long since faded.
Many of these details were repeated in the nation’s media and Horowitz’s hearing room right up until the arbitrator handed down his ruling. On January 11, Horowitz announced he had trimmed A-Rod’s punishment to 162 games, effectively banning Rodriguez for the 2014 season—the remainder of Selig’s time as Commissioner. One night later, 60 Minutes airs its double segment, “The Case of Alex Rodriguez.”
Pelley tells viewers that the Commissioner’s “unprecedented investigation was aimed at protecting the clean players.” But the centerpiece of Pelley’s report is Bosch, who CBS portrays as a star, at one point showing him on a boat, the wind blowing through his hair with the Miami skyline as the backdrop. The drug dealer describes the night he drew A-Rod’s blood in a nightclub bathroom stall. He ticks off the drugs he claims to have given Rodriguez—“testosterone, insulin growth factor one, human growth hormone”—while boasting about his expertise. He says he told Alex to turn in only the urine from “midstream” to avoid detection. (Rodriguez has never failed multiple drug tests since 2004.)
Finally, Bosch tells Pelley that revealing all this about A-Rod has put his life in danger. It’s a charge 60 Minutes chose not to substantiate.
Pelley also interviews Manfred, asking baseball’s chief operating officer how he could trust Bosch’s testimony after spending so much money to get him to talk. Manfred points to the corroborating evidence Bosch supplied, then adds, “Mr. Bosch’s credibility on this issue, whatever his motivations, whatever we did for him, was established by his willingness to come in, raise his right hand, and testify.” Yes, baseball set the bar very high.
What Pelley doesn’t ask Selig or Manfred is why the Boca Raton police department says baseball ignored a request from a detective in the Florida Department of Health not to buy evidence because it was stolen. (Baseball insists it was never told.) Or why they didn’t report the evidence they bought until a Boca Raton detective asked about it eight months later. And Pelley doesn’t ask either man to respond to Bosch’s claim that steroid use in baseball is still rampant, and beating its drug test is a “cakewalk.”
Instead, Pelley closes his show with this point: “Bud Selig has announced his retirement as Commissioner of baseball,” he says. “Part of his legacy is the establishment of the toughest anti-doping rules in all of American pro sports.”
Reaction to Selig and Manfred’s performance and the 60 Minutes report is swift and scathing. The union releases a statement an hour before the piece airs: “It’s unfortunate that Major League Baseball apparently lacks faith in the integrity of the arbitrator’s decision and our Joint Drug Agreement, [and] could not resist the temptation to publicly pile-on against Alex Rodriguez.” Yahoo asks if Selig “opened up his Milwaukee home to Bosch to keep him out of harm’s way from A-Rod’s alleged hit men.” NBC columnist Joe Posnanski labels the whole show “ugliness,” adding, “The only winner in the whole mess seems to be the drugs themselves, which apparently work miracles and, if used right, are undetectable.”
Selig’s response? “We did what we had to do.”
But the reaction shouldn’t have surprised Selig. Just how badly his overreach on Rodriguez’s suspension backfired was broadcast loud and clear by ESPN a few months earlier. In mid-September, the sports network released a poll of self-described baseball fans, conducted from August 20 to 22 by the prominent sports polling firm Turnkey. The question: Who is the current face of baseball?
The answer?
Not Miguel Cabrera, on his way to his second straight MVP.
Not Mike Trout, the Angels’ young Mickey-Mantle-in-waiting.
Not even veteran Yankees icon Derek Jeter.
No, the fans’ choice as the face of baseball?
Alex Rodriguez.
It’s a weary Bud Selig who looks out at the group of owners who’ve been intensely debating the last meaningful decision of his career: the man who’ll become the next Commissioner of baseball. It’s August 14, and they’ve been going at it in this ballroom in Baltimore’s Hyatt Regency for hours—far longer than Bud had hoped or expected.
Selig doesn’t mind that the voting went a round or two. Hell, it should be difficult to choose a successor to someone who’s been as successful as he’s been. But under baseball’s rules, Red Sox co-owner Tom Werner, the opposition’s choice to run against Rob Manfred, has already been defeated and is off the ballot. Now it’s just an up-and-down vote on Bud’s handpicked successor, and those opposed—led by his close friend Jerry Reinsdorf—are trying to run out the clock, hoping to adjourn without a decision so they can put up another candidate against Manfred at a later date.
Selig is at the head of the room, tapping the mic to get everyone’s attention. He’s never been surer of his decision to retire as he is right now. It takes far too much energy to corral these masters of the universe, a task he’s performed well for more than two decades. He’s just turned 80, and he’s attended far too many funerals and delivered far too many eulogies the last few years. There are better ways to spend the rest of his days than twisting arms and making promises.
But he refuses to leave Baltimore today without getting this one last wish.
“It’s been a long day and everyone is tired, but we are not going to leave here until we select a Commissioner,” Selig tells them. “If we did, everyone would say we were dysfunctional, and they would be right. That would hurt the game, and I will not let that happen.”
He’s known this day was coming since early spring, when he finally convinced the owners this would be his last season. And that’s when he told them he wanted Manfred, his loyal soldier for the past 20 years, to be the game’s 10th Commissioner.
He also knew Reinsdorf did not approve of his choice, and would put up a fight. Hell, Jerry’s reminded Bud he didn’t consider the 55-year-old Manfred to be CEO material in almost every one of their daily talks for months. Reinsdorf let Manfred know, too, calling him in early spring. “We need a visionary leader, not a labor lawyer,” the White Sox owner told baseball’s chief operating officer.
It’s not the first time Bud and Jerry have disagreed about an important baseball decision, but the media was so thick with stories of their “feud” that Selig put out a statement six days ago. “Reports of personal animosity between Jerry Reinsdorf and me—or any other alleged disputes between owners regarding the process or the candidates—are unfounded and unproductive,” his statement read. The next day he issued a gag order.
But what really upset Selig—really wounded him—was the heart of Reinsdorf’s campaign against Manfred: Rob would be an extension of Bud’s closed-door policy, Jerry told the owners; he’d make decisions in secret, cut side deals, and leave many of them out of the loop, just as Bud did. Only Bud didn’t see it that way.
So Selig hit the phones as he’d always done. Reinsdorf made it a bit more difficult when he persuaded Werner, one of Bud’s favorites, to pursue the Commissioner’s job. And when Selig saw Reinsdorf’s man gaining support, he pushed the meeting up from November. Selig was sure he had 20 of the 23 votes he needed to put his man in office. Now he had two days to procure the final three votes.
It didn’t take long for this meeting to become both a referendum on Selig’s tenure and a peek at what life is going to be like without him. No one doubts that keeping this gang of owners united instead of at each other’s throats went a long way toward unlocking the game’s potential. Selig leaves office with revenues hitting a record $9 billion this season—up from $1.2 billion when he took charge in 1992—with five franchises now valued at $1 billion or more.
(Selig wisely requested that his compensation be linked to the rise or fall of franchise values. That’s why Bud, who enjoyed a nice upper-middle-class life before becoming Commissioner, will walk away with an estimated net worth in excess of $200 million. And that’s not counting the $35–$40 million he will collect over the next five years, the first two of which—and possibly more—he will serve as Commissioner Emeritus. There are some in ownership who are concerned by Selig’s role and have let Manfred know how important it is that he be seen as independent.)
But now there is open talk that the big market teams want a big rollback in the $400 million of revenue sharing each season. And the labor hawks are back. Indeed, the big rumor making the rounds here has Reinsdorf, Toronto’s Paul Beeston, Cincinnati’s Bob Castellini, Anaheim’s Arte Moreno, and Arizona’s Ken Kendrick making a blood oath to come out of the 2016 labor negotiations with a salary cap. If true, they only need three more votes to block any labor deal they don’t like.
Other concerns were aired, too, problems that Bud—and the owners—have ignored in the final years of the Selig Era. Strip away today’s big paydays and you find a sport supported by an aging, predominantly white audience accustomed to the game’s leisurely pace—a pace MLB’s research shows does not appeal to the younger generation. What happens in the not-so-distant future when the Baby Boomers move on? Will the younger generation reverse course and take their place?
Or will they follow the lead of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who 11 days after this meeting will announce he’s paying $970 million in cash for Twitch, a three-year-old Internet company that’s become the go-to site to play and watch others play video games? Viewership for the World Series has exceeded 16.6 million homes only once in the past six seasons—when the Yankees won it all in 2009. In 2013, the League of Legends World Championship—the video gamers’ title series—was staged in a sold-out Staples Center and watched online by 32 million viewers, an audience four times larger than the one that logged in the previous year.
The core audience for electronic gaming: 18- to 34-year-old males, the group most prized by the nation’s advertisers. It’s also the group that’s been deserting Major League Baseball’s ballparks and broadcasts for much of the last decade.
It’s these trends that served as cover for the 10 owners—Reinsdorf, Beeston, Castellini, Kendrick, Moreno, Boston’s John Henry, Milwaukee’s Mark Attanasio, Tampa’s Stu Sternberg, Washington’s Ted Lerner, and Oakland’s Lew Wolff—who cast their secret ballot for Werner when voting started today at 1:30 p.m. They all pointed to the television producer’s string of hit shows (The Cosby Show, That ’70s Show) as proof he is a man of vision. But Werner got only nine votes on the next ballot, one shy of the minimum to remain in contention, leaving Manfred just two short of what he needed to win.
Manfred got 22 on the third ballot but only 20 on the next, sending the room into chaos and Selig into action, twisting arms, cutting deals, and telling everyone to prepare for a long night. Selig and Manfred allies like Yankees President Randy Levine whip the vote back to 22–8, and when Washington’s Lerner switches to Manfred on ballot No. 6, it’s all over. Selig asks for and receives a symbolic 30–0 vote before the Commissioner and the Commissioner-elect leave to meet the media.
“There is no question that I would not be standing here today if not for Bud,” says Manfred, who shares the podium with his mentor. “I hope that I will perform as the 10th Commissioner in a way that will add to his great legacy.”
“There is no doubt in my mind he has the training, the temperament, the experience to be a very successful Commissioner,” Selig says, “and I have justifiably very high expectations.”
Soon after he’s offered up his last observation, Selig is in a car heading to the airport for his flight back to Milwaukee. He’ll be on the road again in five days, flying out to Oakland as part of his campaign to visit every team before season’s end. It will be a low-key event. He’ll meet with the front office people, schmooze the print and Internet folks, and sit down for interviews with the A’s radio and TV teams.
He’ll dodge any and all questions about the A’s proposed move to San Jose, a hot-button issue here that he’s been “studying” for six years; it’s Rob Manfred’s problem now.
He will tell them his proudest achievement is baseball’s 18 years of labor peace. He’ll remind them there was no way he could have known about steroids. He’ll insist—again—that the players’ strike is what cut short the ’94 season; he simply had no choice. And he’ll tell them it was his push for revenue sharing that has given fans of small market teams like theirs what they all deserve: hope and faith that their team can compete at the start of every season.
He’ll look back on all that has happened during his 22 years in charge and proudly state he’s leaving the game with no regrets. “And that’s unusual,” he’ll say, “because I’m very tough on myself.” But most important, he’s there for the same reason he’s promised to make it to every major league city: to give them all a chance to say good-bye to the ninth Commissioner of baseball.
They’ll never see another one like him.