Selig True Big Winner at All-Star Game

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Now this was interesting Tuesday evening, especially since it just dropped out of the dreamy blue sky over Angel Stadium. Outside of the visitors' clubhouse, Tommy Lasorda sifted through his seven decades in professional baseball as a player, a coach, a manager and an ambassador, and he declared of Bud Selig, "To me, he's got to go down as an outstanding commissioner."

Johnny Bench took it further.

After the Hall of Fame catcher who helped make the Big Red Machine famous during the 1970s encountered an old writing acquaintance along the main concourse, Bench said this of Selig's nearly two decades as baseball's ninth commissioner: "The talks I've had from him, it's covered everything from steroids to fans to corporate matters to Hall of Famers, and he's aware of everything. Without question, he is the best."

Ever?

"Ever," said Bench, with current players telling me the same in the two clubhouses featuring baseball's elite.

Added David Wright of the New York Mets: "On a personal note, he was one of the first persons I heard from last year when I got hit in the head [with a pitch]. He left a message on my voicemail to see if I was OK. He's been great to me and great to the game."

So, the biggest winner on this occasion wasn't the brilliant sun that set over the nearby San Gabriel Mountains. Neither was it the National League, which performed a miracle with its 3-1 victory to keep the American League from snatching All-Star Games for the rest of eternity after going 14 years without a win.



Share Nor was it the planners for the evening, with their nice pinstriped touches in memoriam. You had a video tribute and moment of silence for Yankees owner George Steinbrenner who died earlier in the day. You also had that recording of the late Bob Sheppard doing his Yankee Stadium classic of "No. 2 ... Derek Jeter ... No. 2" whenever he approached the plate.

Instead, with folks praising Selig's name everywhere -- including those players, whose forefathers once refused to blink in their game of chicken with Selig to produce the nastiest of labor stoppages in 1994 -- the winner of winners was the commissioner.

Yes, that one, the one that many wish to bash.

"Is he getting bashed? I wouldn't know. I mean, I didn't even know that was happening," said Atlanta Braves catcher Brian McCann, with wide eyes, and not only because he was the game's most valuable player after he cleared the bases in the top of seventh for the tying and go-ahead runs with a sizzling double down the right-field line.

Added McCann: "Who is upset with Bud, and why?"

To which I replied that Allan H. Selig gets slammed by fans, media and others among the ill-informed for everything from warm beer and cold hot dogs to the fact that he goes by the name "Bud."

The Steroid Era? Bud's fault.

"I was thinking about all of that this morning while I was working out, and here we are in the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, and the grand old game is doing great."
-- Bud Selig The same goes for that blown call at first base by umpire Jim Joyce that ruined Armando Galarraga's perfect game.

And if Selig is so big and bad, why couldn't he keep all of that oil from gushing out of the Gulf?

"I think he's done great. Baseball's in a good place, because a lot of fans are coming out watching us perform, and he's a big part of that," said McCann, telling the truth, with the game setting attendance records during much of the last six years entering this season.

For one, despite a brutal economy, a spirited crowd of 45,408 stuffed the Big A to see, not only McCann's clutch hit, but the NL end its four-year streak of blowing early leads.

This time, the National League finally had a supposedly clutch reliever (the Los Angeles Dodgers' Jonathan Broxton) do his job with a save in the ninth despite the AL threatening. The NL got splendid defense, too, with a diving catch in left by the Milwaukee Brewers' Ryan Braun in the fourth, and with the Chicago Cubs' Marlon Byrd fielding a bloop in shallow right-center in the ninth and coming up with the throw quick enough to nail David Ortiz at second.

Now the National League has home-field advantage for the World Series, and tying such a thing to the winner of the All-Star Game was another one of Selig's ideas. "It's a good one," said McCann, and that was hours before he helped give his first-place Braves a better chance of snatching their first world championship since 1995.

Others also have hope of October glory.

Many others.

Courtesy of Selig's insistence on bringing wild-card teams to the game and switching from two divisions in each league to three, there are more playoff contenders every year. In fact, heading into this All-Star Break, nobody had more than a 4 1/2-game lead in a division for the first time ever.

Then there is that ugliness to traditionalists such as myself called interleague play, but it is loveliness to everybody else. Such games regularly outdraw their counterparts by a bunch.



Not only that, baseball has been free in recent years of the knuckleheads you see with regularity in the NFL and the NBA.

That steroid mess has subsided.

"And don't forget. Bud also did revenue sharing," Lasorda said. "I remember having lunch with Pete Rozelle, and he said, 'Tommy, what we need in the NFL is parity,' and that's what we've got more of in our game, with so many different teams going to the World Series.

2010 MLB All-Star Game

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"And look: We get kicked out of the Olympics, and what did Bud do? He came up with the World Baseball Classic, which is similar."

The game still has problems with its steady drop of African-American players tarnishing the legacy of Jackie Robinson, and who knows what's going to happen next year -- good or bad -- regarding the All-Star Game in Arizona with its immigration controversy?

What we know for sure is that Selig is a lot better than most people think.

"Wow. I'm very [pleased] with being so complimented," said Selig, just days from his 76th birthday. We huddled one-on-one inside his suite at Angel Stadium, where he added in the typically plain-speaking ways of his native Milwaukee tongue, "You know, I always quote [former commissioner] Bart Giamatti, and he always said that baseball is a metaphor for life, and so is being the commissioner.

"When I think of where we are today and where we were 18 years ago, nobody could have dreamed this was possible.

"Gross revenues have gone from $1.2 billion to $7 billion dollars. We have [MLB.com], and our network is doing great, and our clubs are doing great. There has been labor peace for 16 years. You never could have dreamed that in a million years.

"I was thinking about all of that this morning while I was working out, and here we are in the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression, and the grand old game is doing great."

Yes, and it is doing so courtesy of its commissioner -- who is simply great, among those who count the most.