Bud Selig walks out of his regular Milwaukee restaurant after picking up his lunch. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        MILWAUKEE — Bud Selig reaches into his pocket and pulls out a handful of change, cradling it in his left hand and picking out with his right hand precisely the correct number of coins to pay for his lunch: a hot dog with mustard and relish and a large Diet Coke at Gilles Frozen Custard stand.

        With a $3 million annual salary, the commissioner of Major League Baseball could dine lavishly every day. After all, who would question his expense account? But even when he owned the Milwaukee Brewers, he was nicknamed “Budget Bud” for the way he kept expenses slashed to the bone.

        Just because he is running the game now instead of a team, he has not forgotten who he is. That is why he stayed in Milwaukee instead of moving to Major League Baseball's Manhattan offices. Daily, he opts for a $2.65 lunch at Gilles. He operates from the U.S. Bank building downtown, where the Enquirer interviewed him.

        Being a Milwaukee kind of guy is why Selig is commissioner; the owners wanted one of their own.

        Whether he is the right man for the job is about to be decided.

        Major-league players have set a strike deadline for Friday to work out a labor agreement with the owners. If there is no settlement, baseball will face its ninth work stoppage in the last 30 years. Selig and the owners are trying to enact a major revenue-sharing and luxury-tax plan to help smaller-market teams compete, but a plan the players contend will act like a salary cap.

        Selig was anointed by the owners as commissioner for precisely this type of situation. Unlike his more “independent” predecessors, Selig would act in the owners' interests, not necessarily in the interest of fans or the media or Congress or the president.

BUD

The case for, against Selig     The case for Bud Selig keeping the owners behind his economic plan:     1. The owners know him, trust him and see him as one of them.     2. Behind the scenes, he is an accomplished consensus-builder.     3. Too many owners are tired of being unable to compete.     The case against Bud Selig keeping the owners behind his economic plan:     1. The owners have too many different needs and always cave in.     2. He couldn't lead the owners to victory during the last work stoppage.     3. He is not the charismatic and powerful leader baseball needs.

        As the former hands-on operator of the Brewers, he faces an inherent conflict of interest. Fans and media and other observers say Selig cannot act independently, in the interest of baseball, when he himself is a former owner whose daughter now runs the team he brought to Milwaukee in 1970. He also does not project the polished Madison Avenue image of the NBA's David Stern or the NFL's Paul Tagliabue. And he is no Winston Churchill in his oratory when it comes to galvanizing the masses. His critics, however, would argue that he does a good job of galvanizing the owners to his way of thinking in his private daily telephone chit-chats.

        He is a good listener, always processing. Then, gently, he pushes, prods, cajoles, convinces. Nobody can pound away at a rock like Bud The (Consensus) Builder. He is generally able to keep the owners unified, which is critical in labor negotiations.

        “He is very good at understanding the undercurrents of the sport, and understanding the different ownership constituencies and their complaints,” says John Helyar, author of Lords of the Realm, which looks at the owners' battles against the union. “He is an expert at working the back rooms. And when things get into a crisis mode, he has very good political skills. But, all that said, it's a tall order, even when compared to '94 (the last work stoppage), to keep everybody together. You can see that in the interplay of negotiations and the commentary coming out of it.”

        The critics don't like the way Selig goes public with his poor-mouthing.

        “He's a hand-wringer,” says U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, a Hall of Fame pitcher and native of Southgate, Ky. “He wrings his hands and says, "We're in terrible shape, and we're all losing money.' I mean, come on. That's not the image to have for the game of baseball. He should be more aggressive and do what is necessary to get the job done.”

        But Selig gives the overwhelming majority of club owners what they want: The best hope of wringing some concessions from the players' union and making baseball more competitive.

        Vows "buck stops here'

        Selig engineered today's consensus of non-megamarket owners. Part of it was borne of desperation, because never before have so many major-league clubs been among the have-nots and so few among the haves. Just look at the owners' numbers:

        From 1995-2001, there were 224 playoff games; 219 were won by teams in the top half of payroll. And every World Series game was won by a team in the top quarter.

        Never has the disparity among teams been so great. The New York Yankees earned $217.8 million in local revenues last season compared to the Montreal Expos' $9.8 million, according to the owners.

        Selig may not be the right man for the job in the eyes of the fans and the media, but he appears to be the right man for the job in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of owners. They want to level the playing field so that every team — not just seven or eight of the 30 — will have a fair chance to win a World Series championship when the season begins each April.

        The Reds' Carl Lindner , who oversees a payroll that is $80 million less than the Yankees' $125 million, is squarely in Selig's corner. Selig says Lindner has been fiscally “responsible, and if the game is to survive, that's the kind of economic thinking we need. ... People talk about "this guy being more committed to winning, because look what he spent.' But if somebody's local (TV) revenue is $50 million more than Cincinnati's, the (bigger guy) is just spending what he has been able to generate in a bigger market. It doesn't show any deeper commitment to winning.”

        “We need to do what the game has never done before,” Selig says. “We haven't addressed our problems for 35 years. ... It is a great challenge, and yet it is also a great opportunity.”

        He views it as his raison d'etre. He says he will “see it through.”

        “I believe I understand the problems as well as, if not better than, anybody,” Selig says. “There's a lot of history here — a lot of good history, a lot of bad history. But I'm going to let events unfold and hope that that will show how long we've come the last few years, in revenue-sharing, all the scheduling things, centralization of the (league) offices. ... The '90s were the busiest decade in our history of restructuring our game. We need to continue that.”

        He doesn't use the words that he is here to “save baseball.”

        But clearly, that is how he sees it.

        “One of the great reasons we are where we are today is that other (commissioners and owners) had a chance, and yet in every labor negotiation we either went backward or maintained the status quo,” Selig says. “That was unfortunate for franchises like the Reds, Royals, Brewers, Twins, Tigers, Astros, Pirates, Expos and on and on.”

        He regards it as a responsibility, rather than something he relishes, to take on these issues.

        “I do believe some day there will be a fan in Cincinnati who says (the game is better) because of what happened when the playing field was leveled,” Selig says. “The Cincinnati club would be the first one to tell you, "How are we going to keep our players? How are we going to continue to be competitive?' ”

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        But most observers don't let the commissioner daydream about the future.

        Unless it includes him relinquishing his job.

        Doug DeCinces, who along with present Reds manager Bob Boone was a league player representative during the 1981 work stoppage, says Selig lacks believability.

        “The owners chose Bud Selig,” DeCinces says. “He doesn't really have any credibility with the players, and I don't think he has any with the fans, either. They realize he's acting in the owners' interest.”

        What will the critics say if baseball emerges a healthier and more competitive game because of Selig's behind-the-scenes consensus-building?

        “The economics of the game have to be changed,” says Jeff Smulyan, former owner of the Seattle Mariners and now the owner of Emmis Communications in Indianapolis. “The game is a mess. And, in a town (Cincinnati) where competitive imbalance is going to get worse before it gets better if something isn't done, you have to have somebody in there fighting for you who knows that. Nobody understands it better than Bud, nobody cares about it more than he does and nobody has the total trust of the other people in the game (owners) the way he does. He very definitely is the man for the job.”

        The game has undergone a number of changes since Selig took over as the interim commissioner in September

        1992. He convinced the owners to add a third division to each league, wild cards to the playoffs and interleague play to the regular season. He abolished the league offices. He put the umpires under the commissioner's umbrella.

        Still, this battle over how baseball does business will be his defining moment, even if Selig wishes it had not come down to this. He loves the game too much to enjoy crafting a legacy from its problems. But he also contends that to ignore these problems is to doom the game.

        Not Bud light in Milwaukee

        Say what you want about Bud Selig anyplace else in the country. He will always be remembered fondly in his hometown as the man who returned baseball to Milwaukee, after a five-year hiatus (1965-1969) when the Braves left for Atlanta.

        “I was only 5 at the time, but what I remember is watching my dad lead the group to bring baseball back here, and people inside baseball and in this town saying it was "Mission Impossible,' ” says his daughter, Wendy Selig-Prieb, who now owns the club. “It's one thing to hear your parents talk about commitment and the importance of sticking with it through adversity. But it is quite another thing to see it in action. Dad never wavered in his belief that it would happen. And I saw it in the drive to get the new ballpark. Dad is just not going to give up on something he believes in.”

        Ms. Prieb says her father has the “vision, leadership and courage to weather the storm.”

        If you find it hard to believe Selig is regarded fondly anywhere, walk a couple of hours before game time into Kelly's Bleachers eatery and tavern, near the sites of the former County Stadium and the new Miller Park.

        Ask anybody about Selig.

        No matter how a speaker lambastes the commissioner — for awkwardly handling the tied All-Star Game in Milwaukee earlier this summer ... or for poor-mouthing before Congress last month ... or for not creating a blueprint to make the Brewers winners before he turned over the club to his daughter — the answer always begins the same:

        “Well, he did bring baseball back to Milwaukee.”

        Phil Vugrich, a 43-year-old from the South Side, and Jason Hamilton, a 28-year-old from Greenfield, disagree on the attractiveness of Miller Park, but defend the warmth with which Selig is regarded in Milwaukee.

        “You try losing baseball and have people tell you it's never coming back, and then see Bud ride in on his white horse and bring it back,” Vugrich says. “Then you'd understand why everybody in Milwaukee respects him, even if not everybody still reveres him after '94 (when the World Series was cancelled). He'll persevere. He'll do what he thinks is right.”

        And for the owners, he did engineer the consensus that got revenue-sharing started and then increased. Helyar credits Selig for addressing such a key issue. And Smulyan, only half-facetiously, regards it as an act worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, so disparate and fractious are the owners' interests.

        Messrs. Helyar and Smulyan agree that Selig's legacy rides on the present labor negotiations. If the playing field is leveled and more teams are able to compete for a World Championship, Selig will be well remembered, says Ohio University history professor and author Charles Alexander.

        “If he could significantly increase the amount of money that is going to the smaller-market teams, he would be acclaimed,” Alexander says. “He would emerge from all this a very strong figure.”

        Selig might even be remembered as a commissioner who restored the faith of the masses, much in the way Kenesaw Mountain Landis transformed baseball in 1920 after the Black Sox scandal. He permanently banished eight players of the Chicago White Sox for taking payoffs from gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series to the Reds. He restored the game's credibility with fans.

        But the commissioner's job has changed since then. When the owners forced out Fay Vincent in 1992 for acting too independently, they wanted someone to protect their interests. Anyone taking the job would have to accept that. Yet the public wanted a heavyweight and took to calling Selig “Bud Light.”

        When Selig said in a recent Sports Illustrated story that “I have more authority than any other commissioner ever did, and I can count. I have the votes to do what I want to do,” Alexander scoffs.

        “That is ridiculous,” Alexander says. “It (the commissioner's power) has never been the same since Landis left. And even he had his power eroded the last seven or eight years, from the mid- to late-'30s on. When (the owners) first brought him in, they were willing to give him all the power he needed to clean up the mess. He had dictatorial power for the first 10 to 14 years he was in office. ... By the (mid-1940s), the owners were determined to never again give those terms to another commissioner.”

        On the other hand, he says, Selig “does have clout.”

        “He has a certain cachet with the owners, because he is an owner,” Alexander says. “That is the (type of commissioner) the owners have wanted all along. And, by abolishing the league presidencies and gaining control of the umpires, putting them all under the umbrella of the commissioner's office, he has consolidated the powers in the commissioner's office.”

        Landis, of course, didn't kill the game for 232 days first before trying to save it years later, as Selig did. Despite his accomplishments, Selig is mostly remembered for being at the helm when the players struck on Aug. 12, 1994. It truncated one of the most exciting seasons ever, both for the individual records being pursued and the pennant races that were raging. Everybody, including the players, figured the owners would never kill the World Series. But they, behind the interim commissioner, Allan H. “Bud” Selig, did just that.

        The matter at hand, though, is this: Is Selig, 67, despite his fumbling and bumbling on the public stage, the right man to bring baseball out of this crisis?

        Yes, says Smulyan.

        “Nobody likes to be attacked personally (in media and in Congress),” Smulyan says, “but I think Bud would gladly take all those jokes on the comedy shows, all those hits on David Letterman's Top Ten lists, if people will look back in 10 years and say, "This guy really did save the game.' There are parallels for it. In (the early 1950s), Harry Truman was skewered for the decisions he made as president and for his (lack of a polished style) in office. Now, he's regarded as one of our great presidents.

        “History has judged him a lot differently than the critics did.”

        ———

        Reporters Cliff Peale and Dustin Dow contributed to this report.

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