[Interview with Baseball Commish] Selig: 'We need to deal with this'

Only 35 years old, the new owner of the Brewers, living a dream come true, Allan H. (Bud) Selig went to New York in April 1970 to attend his first owners' meeting. "I was excited," he says, especially when the commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, seated him between two of the game's old lions, the Cubs' Phil Wrigley and the Cardinals' Gussie Busch.

Mr. Wrigley was very quiet. It was one of the angriest meetings I've ever been to."

Here we are 32 years later, baseball at another crisis point. This time, no longer a kid, now the Major League Baseball commissioner, Selig is the club owners' leader in negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement with the MLB Players Association.

Though the sides have scheduled negotiating sessions through June, the players association has set a strike date for early August. The association's leverage is greatest at that point, with pennant races, playoffs and the World Series coming up. Once the season is over, clubs could declare negotiations at an impasse, suspend all player contract talks and impose working conditions of their choice.

TSN: It's looking like war again.
Selig: I hope not. But, look, we have a competitive-balance problem. I do believe the game has had this remarkable renaissance. Even with attendance down, we're going to draw 70 million people, which is great. But there's a competitive-balance problem and economic problems related to that.

We showed the financial numbers to the clubs again in a meeting recently, left them up on the board, team by team. There wasn't a sound in the room. I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, these are the numbers that I've taken a fearful pounding over, that you submitted, that many bodies have had, that bankers have never raised questions about."

And I said, "Look, it's really competitive balance that we have to talk about. I don't think the average fan gives a damn whether a team has made money or lost money. It's, 'How does that affect the play on the field?' And, unfortunately, it's begun to affect play on the field. We can't ignore that."

So the last thing anybody wants is a work stoppage. But I don't think we have the option to ignore this. If I can fault baseball, I borrow a line my wife used to use. It's Scarlett O'Hara's line from Gone With the Wind -- a perfect repression mechanism: "I'll think about it tomorrow."

That's what we did. We did it in '76, in '80, in '81. Lee MacPhail, a great baseball man, said in '85, "We're fighting for the small markets. You can see the problem coming." We didn't do anything about it. In 1990, the same thing. Had a wonderful opportunity to address the problem. Didn't. In '94, we know what that was -- clubs attempting to change the system. So here we are today.

TSN: The 1994 thing was horrendous. No playoffs, no World Series. This looks like it could be worse.
Selig: I hope not. I don't want to think so.

TSN: I've heard people privy to owners' thinking say some owners are ready to shut down the game this year and next. No 2003 season, if necessary.
Selig: They believe that.

TSN: Are you ready to contemplate that, shutting down all next year?
Selig: I can't let myself even think about that because I really want to keep focus on making a deal.

TSN: Your predecessor, Fay Vincent, was quoted by the Washington Post as saying the players association has the greater strength in this confrontation and that you ought to sign a "quick, dirty deal," just to move on.
Selig: He's wrong. Fay's been gone 10 years, and he hasn't seen the numbers. To be fair, he has been quoted saying they're bad. But I don't have that luxury.

I can't sit here and just pull a Scarlett O'Hara. There are nervous people all over. They can't make it. And their fans know it, too. So think-about-it another-day is the problem. If we hadn't done that in 1990, we wouldn't be where we are today.

TSN: Do you think the players association doesn't want to deal with any of what you see as problems?
Selig: Let's be honest about it. The status quo is what they want. From their perspective, I understand. I'm not even critical. But we just can't afford the status quo. The status quo is not producing.

In the last seven World Series, not one game has been won by a team that wasn't in the top quartile of payroll. Not one game. Forget a Series, not one game. We need to deal with this.

TSN: Are you proposing revolution?
Selig: We're not asking for a salary cap. Our Blue Ribbon Panel (on economics) called them "modest proposals." And things have deteriorated since (2000).

TSN: You told the Los Angeles Times that "six to eight" teams might fail financially if something's not done.
Selig: I've had people in baseball say they think I've been too conservative. They think there are more than that. I hope they're wrong.

TSN: The Blue Ribbon Panel said there was no need for contraction if its recommendations were implemented. Does the contraction talk now signal that you've given up on those recommendations?
Selig: The panel's recommendations are still my blueprint. The contraction issue is a signal that the recommendations haven't been implemented and the situation has deteriorated. Even this week, I've had calls from owners back on contracting four teams. "We've gotta do four, Commissioner. Why are you only doing two?" they say.

By the way, I keep reading about "Bud's contraction plan." This is the owners' plan, by a continuing 30-0 vote. I was the last one in because, long ago, I went through the removal of the Braves from Milwaukee. I still bear the anguish of the Braves leaving here.

TSN: Do you believe more than eight teams are in trouble?
Selig: I'll stand with my six to eight. Maybe people will understand when, God forbid, teams can't make their payrolls. Why in life do you have to wait until something gets that bad before you do something about it?

TSN: Isn't that what revenue sharing is about?
Selig: Do the clubs understand that? Yes. Now, they do. Our first real revenue-sharing meeting was the roughest two or three days any of us had ever gone through.

It was horrible. It was about breaking this chain of no revenue sharing. Think of the wonderful vision of George Halas and the Maras and Bert Bell and Pete Rozelle and the Rooneys. All those NFL pioneers understood that these were your partners. That took a lot of vision. It took an absence of arrogance. It took an absence of selfishness.

It took people who cared about their sport more than they cared about themselves. This is a very rare thing in today's world.

TSN: And baseball lacked that?
Selig: We have people like that. John Fetzer, John Galbreath, Phil Wrigley, Gussie Busch, Tom Yawkey. But as things evolved we were more inclined to let selfishness and myopic views dominate rather than, as Pete Rozelle used to say, "Think league."

What changed for us in the late '80s and early '90s was the stunning difference in revenue because of local broadcast. In the 21st century, when you try to keep franchises in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and New York, L.A. or Chicago, you have this stunning difference.

You can't be healthy, then, without salary restraint and revenue sharing. The Maras, Bell and Rozelle were so smart they created a revenue-sharing structure from the start that saved them all. What's wrong with that?

TSN: Couldn't you take that local broadcast money and just divide it up among the clubs however you wanted?
Selig: No, revenue sharing is now a subject of bargaining with the players association. Do I agree? No. But we haven't wanted to go to court over that. Everybody keeps saying, "It's your revenue. Why don't you guys just do what you want?"

For years, Marvin Miller and Don Fehr (the players' last two executive directors) have said, "Why are you guys coming to us? Why should the players solve your problems? Do what you want to solve your problems. Share revenue anyway you want." Now things have changed. Now they want to talk about a different plan.

TSN: You mean, if the 30 owners sat down and said, "We've got $2 billion here; we're going to divide it up how we want," the players would have to pass on it?
Selig: Yes.

TSN: And they wouldn't?
Selig: Well, we're nowhere on revenue sharing. They're way here, and we're up here. The difference in this negotiation is, I have the votes for revenue sharing. The problem is at the table. They're very protective of the big-market clubs.

TSN: The players want the big boys bidding.
Selig: It's a bizarre story. The Yankees still will always have more money. And that's fine. But you can't have the disparity we have. Here the Yankees have $252 million and Kansas City and Pittsburgh sit with $50 million to $60 million.

You could bring back the smartest baseball people ever, bring back Branch Rickey and George Weiss, and it's not going to work if they have to work with that disadvantage.

TSN: What about relocation instead of contraction? You told Congress in 1999 there are "no more greater fools." Now you've had competing buyers in Boston, and there are three groups waiting in Washington, D.C.
Selig: We'll eventually relocate, once we get the core problems solved. But is the greater-fool theory over? It is. The Anaheim Angels have been for sale for a couple years now. Yes, Boston, there were groups, but let's go to San Diego or Oakland or Houston or Minneapolis, where the team's been for sale for three months now and not one person has come forward. So this idea that there are people stacked up all over is wrong. It took us seven years to sell the Kansas City Royals.

TSN: Still, even a member of your Blue Ribbon Panel, George Mitchell, is among the new Red Sox owners.
Selig: If George Mitchell was trying to buy San Diego, then you'd have a hell of a story. It's the Red Sox -- one of the great franchises in sports.

But just think about that. The net worth there is $350 million; the land and the ballpark are worth $80 million to $100 million. So you're talking about a team worth $200 million to $250 million. Bob McNair just paid $700 million for an NFL expansion team in Houston.

I told our people, again, as our asset values have dropped off that The Moag Group (a sports industry analyst) did a study on franchise values. From '91 to '94, the NFL and baseball were the same. From '95 to the present, the average baseball team sold for $182 million. You know what the average football team has sold for? $439 million.

I said, even to the New York clubs, "If I had told you 10 years ago that the Washington Redskins would be worth $200 million more than the New York Yankees, you guys would have laughed at me." But they went for $800 million. Somebody's got to start asking why. I'll repeat: If George Mitchell wanted to buy the Pittsburgh Pirates or Cincinnati Reds, then you've got a hell of a story.

TSN: After September 11, you said baseball is an American institution with special responsibilities. With this stoppage coming up -- it seems inevitable -- it seems like '94 all over again. Where does your statement of responsibilities fit with stopping the game again?
Selig: I've thought a lot about that. Do I ignore these problems and make believe they don't exist, which is what we've done now for four decades? Knowing how much we care about the game, the institution, do you just make believe these problems don't exist and not try to do something about them? And what about the people in Kansas City and Pittsburgh and Cincinnati and St. Louis, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, San Diego, Detroit, Houston and on and on? What do we say to them?

As I told the club owners, we're on the horns of an intense dilemma. We have played a great role in this country, as late as last September and October, in a very profound, emotional way. So my fervent hope is to find a way to preserve this social institution and not let it disintegrate.

Unfortunately, I occupy the one place where I can't just dream and wish that "tomorrow is another day." I can't do that. Do I like reading and hearing some things said by people whose agendas are different, who don't really care what the facts are?

It's painful, but in the end I have a job to do. And I guess I've never said this, but do I wish somebody had done this decades ago? I do. They didn't. Maybe I can get Wellington Mara to come help me.

TSN: In the end, is there just so much bad blood now between owners and players that nothing gets done without pain?
Selig: Thirty, 35 years. Marvin Miller vs. Bowie Kuhn always reminded me of the three greatest fights I ever saw, (Tony) Zale vs. (Rocky) Graziano.

TSN: We haven't seen Selig-Fehr yet.
Selig: No, and you're not going to, either. There's got to be a time when we rise above this.

TSN: Any sign that that time is anywhere near?
Selig: I'm always hopeful. After the most recent negotiating session, our people did feel good. There was no rancor at the table. There was very constructive discussion. But the only thing I can say to you is, ask me again in 30 or 60 days or 90.

I am on record here as saying that Baseball is DEAD unless they quickly get (1) Revenue Sharing; and (2) a Salary Cap of some sort.

According to this interview, if the work stoppage happens, it is going to be the player's union that kills Baseball. It sounds like the owners, after dragging their feet for years, are ready to face reality, but the UNION doesn't want revenue sharing because they like bidding up the players' contracts every year.

And the UNION sure as h*ll ain't gonna go for no salary cap.

BOTTOM LINE: MLB is dead, it's just walkin' around not knowin' it yet.

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