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Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig, who changed the face of Major League Baseball while leading the sport into an era of unprecedented popularity and prosperity, will formally step down from the office when his current term expires on January 24, 2015. The announcement was made Thursday. "It remains my great privilege to serve the game I have loved throughout my life," Selig said. "Baseball is the greatest game ever invented, and I look forward to continuing its extraordinary growth and addressing several significant issues during the remainder of my term. "I am grateful to the owners throughout Major League Baseball...

LA Dodgers file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy headline only so far - CNBC says it's in a Delaware court...

Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times reports that Bud Selig will announce this afternoon that Major League Baseball is going to take over the financial operations of the Dodgers. UPDATE: Major League Baseball has just issued the following statement on behalf of Bud Selig: “Pursuant to my authority as Commissioner, I informed Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt today that I will appoint a representative to oversee all aspects of the business and the day-to-day operations of the Club. I have taken this action because of my deep concerns regarding the finances and operations of the Dodgers and to...

The decks are awash: the tears have already reached the scuppers, and there’s no sign of abatement. The output from the perpetually lachrymose has been prodigious. Even people who aren’t baseball fans are screaming, eyes bedewed, for justice—justice at any cost! “They outta let Manager’s have red flags!” “Why don’t they have instant replay? They have it everywhere else!” “Oh, hu, hu hu! It isn’t fair!” Before one more word: I am a lifelong Detroit Tigers fan. Although I no longer live in that shell of a city (and its degradation is truly something worth weeping over), I routinely pay...

Amid Furor over State's New Immigration Law, Commissioner Defends Baseball's Record on Minority Hiring (AP) Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is ignoring calls to move next year's All-Star game from Phoenix because of Arizona's new immigration law. Asked about such demands at a news conference Thursday following an owners meeting, he responded with a defense of baseball's record on minority hiring. "Apparently all the people around and in minority communities think we're doing OK. That's the issue, and that's the answer," he said. "I told the clubs today: 'Be proud of what we've done.' They are. We should. And that's our...

In the category of baseball controversies that not only don't die but don't even taper off a little bit, we have now had two decades of the argument regarding Pete Rose. We have come to the 20th anniversary of Rose accepting a lifetime ban from baseball for gambling on baseball. In every single moment during these 20 years, you could start a heated debate among baseball fans anywhere, by uttering these four simple words: "What about Pete Rose ..." It is a classic debate. Against Rose is the fact that he violated the game's first commandment: Don't bet on baseball....

PHILADELPHIA — Bud Selig was determined there wouldn't be a rain-shortened World Series game on his watch. Selig met in the umpires' room with officials of both teams an hour before the start of Game 5 on Monday night and told them no matter how long it took, the game would not be cut short. "I was not going to allow that to happen," he said, clutching a rule book in his left hand

NEW YORK (AP) -- Barry Bonds will have to wait until he passes Hank Aaron before baseball throws a party for him. Major League Baseball is not planning any celebration for Bonds if and when he tops Babe Ruth's mark of 714 home runs, commissioner Bud Selig said Thursday. "Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's record," Selig said. "We don't celebrate anybody the second or third time in." Bonds has been the subject of steroids speculation for several seasons. The recent book "Game of Shadows" detailed allegations against him, and a federal grand jury is investigating whether he committed perjury when...

NEW YORK (AP) - The Rev. Jesse Jackson says Major League Baseball and San Diego police failed to protect Barry Bonds and should be trying to find out who threw a syringe at him in the Giants' opener. The object was thrown near the San Francisco slugger as he came off the field following the eighth inning Monday night in San Diego. Bonds picked up the syringe - about the size of a fat cigar - and carried it off the field. "That fan should have been arrested," Jackson said. "That object could have had a needle in it. It...

Heard on radio tonight (WSB-Atlanta) Selig is serious. WIll investigate Bonds and others. May name former Senator George Mitchell to head investigation Announcement shortly

NEW YORK -- The Hall of Fame's doors will remain shut to Pete Rose, who won't appear on the baseball writers' ballot in his final year of eligibility. Commissioner Bud Selig will not rule on Rose's application for reinstatement before the 2006 ballot is released Nov. 29, according to Bob DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer. Rose, who last year admitted he did bet on the Cincinnati Reds while managing the team in the late 1980s, doesn't understand why the rules, unless changed, won't allow him to ever appear on the annual ballot of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. "How...

Albert Pujols, the Lou Gehrig of our times, picked up his first Most Valuable Player Award the other day. But if baseball had begun testing for drugs when other sports did, it might well have been Pujols' third MVP -- in just five major league seasons. And then we'd be saying, rightly, "This guy might be the best player to come along in 50 years." Pujols had the misfortune of breaking in around the time Barry Bonds developed a taste for "flaxseed oil." Thus, he finished second to Bonds in the '02 and '03 National League voting instead of, perhaps,...

The roof, the roof, the roof is on… or off Jason Joyce on Tue, 10/25/2005 - 11:29am. Because there are several hundred baseball writers covering the World Series, there's a lot of sweating the small stuff. The latest non-story to become a big story has to do with the retractable roof on Houston's Minute Maid Park and whether it should be open or closed for Game 3 (Tuesday, 7:38 pm, FOX). The Astros want it closed for two reasons: crowd noise and predictable weather. Writing a diary for the Houston Chronicle, Houston third baseman Moran Ensberg considers it a home-field...

DETROIT (AP) -- Baseball commissioner Bud Selig says remarks by a congressional committee chairman against billionaire George Soros won't be considered as the sport weighs offers for the Washington Nationals. Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who chairs the House Government Reform Committee, told Roll Call last month that "Major League Baseball understands the stakes" if the group Soros is a part of purchases the first-place team.

An independent review of the state of the Milwaukee Brewers released Thursday paints a portrait of a franchise that is $133.1 million in debt, and that received nearly $44 million in equity from team owners over the past 10 years yet reported a net loss from operations of $28.8 million over the same time period.The report, by a three-member panel of business leaders appointed by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, also contains a few surprises, specifically a review of the salaries paid former Brewers president and now baseball commissioner Bud Selig, his daughter, Wendy Selig-Prieb, and son-in-law Laurel Prieb....

<p>It's hard to know who is being the bigger baby here: John Henry or George Steinbrenner. In an e-mail sent to reporters about the deal that puts Alex Rodriguez in pinstripes, the Red Sox owner whined that "baseball doesn't have an answer for the Yankees." Mr. Steinbrenner fired back that this was just "sour grapes" because the Sox had failed to broker a deal for A-Rod back in December.</p>

Brewers announce team is for sale By DON WALKER Wendy Selig-Prieb, chairman of the team's board of directors, made the announcement at an afternoon news conference, saying the decision was in the best interest of baseball in Milwaukee. "The unrelenting desire of our ownership group to bring baseball back to our community some 35 years ago has been surpassed only by their unwavering commitment to preserve major league baseball in our community," said said. "While the ownership may be changing Brewers baseball will remain an important part of the fabric of our community." Board member Michael Grebe said the decision...

Somewhere in his considerable baseball education, for all he sought to adapt and evoke the old Dodger Way, during and after his years in that august organization, Mike Scioscia must have learned his most important baseball lesson from Sparky Anderson. “We try every way we can do to kill this game,” said Anderson, the unchallenged virtuoso of the baseball double negative, “but for some reason nothing nobody does never hurts it.” Those words were never made truer than by the way Scioscia managed the All-Star Game while Dusty Baker proved, in the same game, why Scioscia last fall won a...

Rose: Will He Ever Be Reinstated? Fans Want An Answer CINCINNATI -- Will he or won't he? That's what Pete Rose supporters want to know. Rose, baseball's all-time hit king, has been banned from baseball since 1989, but on-again-off-again talks over the last 12 months have prompted speculation that Rose will be reinstated. Now, however, Reds fans just want a decision to be made. Whether it's Major League Baseball, Rose's agent in Florida or his friends in the Tri-State, nobody seems to be willing to talk about the situation. But as baseball's All-Star break offers time to visit other issues,...

<p>The self-anointed Grand Poohbahs of Major League Baseball (MLB) have deigned to grant local elected officials an audience sometime next month to measure just how desperate D.C. politicians are to attract a big-league baseball franchise. The poohbahs' unit of measurement, as it has been in every other city, is the dollar bill. Specifically, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and his fellow extortionists want to know how many hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds D.C. officials are willing to provide his multibillion-dollar industry in order to build a state-of-the-art stadium where players earning nearly $2.5 million per year will ply their trade.</p>