MILWAUKEE (AP) — Bud Selig hoped for a smoother World Series start than in 1982.
On the way to the Milwaukee Brewers' first World Series game, his mother fell and broke her left hip crossing the street from the team hotel in St. Louis to Busch Stadium. Marie Selig was taken to a hospital and needed surgery.
“I called her up in about the eighth inning and said, `Well, how are you doing?'" Selig recalled Thursday. ”She said: `We’re doing fine. We’re ahead.'"
Milwaukee won that game 10-0 but ultimately lost the Series in Game 7, wasting a 3-1 sixth-inning lead in a 6-3 loss to the Cardinals. The Brewers didn't return to the Series for 44 years, and when they did, Selig was on hand Friday.
Attending his first game of the year, the 92-year-old former Brewers owner and baseball commissioner participated in the first-pitch ceremony. Sitting in a golf cart in front of the Milwaukee dugout, Selig handed the ball to Brewers' Hall of Famer Robin Yount, who threw the pitch and returned the ball to the former commissioner.
“He watches and he rants and raves and he lives and dies on every pitch, just like he always has,” said his daughter, Wendy Selig-Prieb.
While working for his family's auto-leasing company, Selig became a minority investor in the Milwaukee Braves, who played at County Stadium from 1953-65 and won two NL pennants and the 1957 World Series. He was angered when the team's controlling owner moved the team to Atlanta for the 1966 season.
When the Seattle Pilots struggled financially in their 1969 expansion season and the team's owner, Pacific Northwest Sports Inc., filed for bankruptcy during spring training in 1970, Selig assembled a group that bid $10.8 million to purchase the franchise.
Selig and his investors were awarded the team by bankruptcy referee Sidney C. Volinn on March 31, one week before opening day. The equipment truck had left spring training in Tempe, Arizona, and was in Salt Lake City, unsure where to go, when Selig called traveling secretary Tommy Ferguson, who had held the same job with the Braves. Selig ordered the truck to Milwaukee, and Ferguson asked what to do about the uniforms.
“I said, `Look, that's going to be simple,'” Selig recalled. “We're going to change the S to an M and we've just become the Milwaukee Brewers.”
Selig was a hands-on owner who fixated on every high and low — he memorably threw his raincoat in the back of Yankee Stadium's press box when angered by a setback.
His Brewers reached the playoffs for the first time in 1981 and won the AL pennant in 1982. That roster was led by Yount, Paul Molitor, Cecil Cooper, Gorman Thomas and Ben Oglivie, a group known as Harvey's Wallbangers for manager Harvey Kuenn.
When Bruce Sutter struck out Thomas to end World Series Game 7, Selig was crushed.
“I told Robin this, and Paul and others, I believed we’d be back the next year,” he said.
Milwaukee never returned under his ownership.
Selig became acting baseball commissioner in September 1992 after leading the owners to force out Fay Vincent. His daughter gradually took over supervising much of the team's management and became CEO in August 1998 after her father was elected commissioner.
Current owner Mark Attanasio bought the Brewers from the Selig family in January 2005, and Bud Selig remained as commissioner until his retirement in January 2015 at age 80. Attanasio speaks with him frequently.
“The other night I called him after the game in Los Angeles,” Attanasio said, referring to the pennant clincher. “That was so cool. He was awake. It was late, too. It wasn’t even right after the game.”
Selig maintains an office in a Milwaukee tower as commissioner emeritus, was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 2017 and teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A statue of Selig outside American Family Field's home plate gate was dedicated in 2010.
Selig pushed for a salary cap as acting commissioner, a failed effort that led to a 7 1/2-month strike, causing cancellation of the 1994 World Series. Under his successor, Rob Manfred, owners again have proposed a salary cap, and a likely management lockout threatens the 2027 season.
He says students often ask him about a cap.
“Do we need a salary cap to continue this for owners like Mark Attanasio and the Tampa people and others? You bet we do,” Selig said. "The basic question there always is: How come baseball is the only sport without a salary cap?
“My mother was right. She wanted me to be a teacher,” Selig said. “She had been a teacher, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely.”
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