Bud Selig - The CEO who rips his own company

MILWAUKEE -- A few times a year, Bud Selig puts aside the business of baseball and his crusade to save the game so he can catch a glimpse of what he desperately craves.

Baseball's commissioner leaves his top-floor office in Milwaukee, with its view of Lake Michigan to the east and Miller Park to the west, and travels two hours north to Green Bay.

There, he sits on the Packers' board of directors.

It's during these trips that Selig comes face-to-face with an economic system that is fabulously favorable to teams, spreads its enormous wealth equally across its landscape and has placed the focus on the field, not on finances.

Selig envies pro football, which many fans argue is now America's true national pastime, replacing baseball and its dual ills of competitive imbalance and infighting.

While fans in every NFL city are abuzz over their team's prospects for a trip to San Diego for the Super Bowl in January, baseball is headed for its ninth work stoppage since 1972 if owners and the players' union don't reach a new labor accord by Friday.

"What I hope for is a system like the NFL's, not the particulars of it -- it's two different systems financially -- but what we need is to get the negatives out of our game," Selig said. "We need to quit talking about money all the time. We need to quit quarreling."

His critics contend that Selig is as much to blame as anyone for the negativity that surrounds baseball. They compare the 68-year-old commissioner to a CEO who publicizes his company's problems while pitching its products.

On one hand, Selig says the game is enjoying a renaissance. On the other, he says teams are losing money, they might have to fold, lines of credit are maxed out, payrolls can't be met and salaries are out of control.

He is doggedly determined in his prescription: fewer teams, more revenue sharing and a luxury tax to slow spiraling salaries.

Selig, who determined the owners' labor policy during strikes in 1985 and 1994-95 and a lockout in 1990, is just too inflexible for his own good, contends Marvin Miller, union head Donald Fehr's predecessor.

"He's almost inherited this from Bowie Kuhn: 'Got to have a victory.' People like that should not be allowed to labor management relations. They damage their own people," Miller said.

Credibility is Selig's main predicament, suggests former commissioner Fay Vincent, forced from office a decade ago because owners saw him as too union-friendly.

He contends Selig was a ringleader in the mid-1980s, when owners tried to stem the salary bidding wars by secretly agreeing to shun each other's free agents, a charge Selig denies.

"He can't keep a story straight," Vincent said. "That is part of the problem Don has. Don knows collusion is part of Selig's history."

But Vincent said even Selig's critics can't deny his passion.

"I think he's truly committed to baseball. I think he loves the game. I think he's trying very hard to do the right thing for baseball," Vincent said. "Collusion, that's a devastating part of his history."

Selig adamantly denies he was behind collusion. Three arbitration decisions ruled owners conspired against free agents in violation of their labor contract, and management settled the cases for $280 million.

And, Selig said, he inherited all of baseball's ills when he was picked 10 years ago next month by his fellow owners to oversee the sport following Vincent's ouster.

"It's easy for some people to be critical. When they had the opportunity to fix things, they didn't do anything," Selig said.

"My greatest concern is I don't want it said about us that we were afraid to face our problems. If some of these had been solved earlier, we wouldn't be in the position we are today."

In his decade in charge, Selig has guided baseball to record revenues and its richest TV contract. He added wild-card teams and interleague play, which have energized pennant races and rivalries and helped draw record crowds. Limited revenue sharing was implemented, the leagues were consolidated. There's been a boom in ballpark construction, and an influx of international talent has energized the sport.

But Selig also detracted from the World Series last year by announcing less than 48 hours after Game 7 that two teams would be eliminated. And he was criticized for calling off the All-Star game with the scored tied 7-7 after 11 innings.

A prominent congressman, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., called for his resignation last winter, former minority owners of the Montreal Expos sued him for his role in the sale of the team and New York Mets co-owner Nelson Doubleday contended in a lawsuit that Selig conspired to "manufacture phantom operating losses" in baseball's books as part of its strategy in labor talks.

Now, the sport could have its second work stoppage under his watch.

The first one was a 232-day affair that forced the cancellation of the 1994 World Series and was a public relations nightmare, one that Selig said he's prepared to weather again.

"If I could just maintain the status quo, this would be easy and popularity would come as a result," Selig said. "But unfortunately, I don't have that luxury."