A Look at the Three Who Would Be MLB Commissioner
Baseball owners are expected to vote Thursday to select Commissioner Bud Selig's successor, a process that a few months ago lacked much intrigue. Selig had announced last year that he would retire after the 2014 season, and it became clear with Rob Manfred's promotion to chief operating officer last September that he would be the logical choice as the next commissioner.
But, as with many things in baseball, logic did not hold. Some owners have lined up against the idea of Selig's handing off to a favorite deputy. And now, after a search committee sorted through the possibilities, there are three finalists.
Rob Manfred
Up until a few weeks ago, Manfred seemed to fit perfectly into the mold of commissioner-in-waiting. He was set up to be Selig's handpicked successor, the faithful deputy who had played important behind-the-scenes roles since he began working for baseball full time in 1998. For 15 of those years, he was an executive vice president, in charge of both labor relations that were devoid of any work stoppages and the sport's increasing efforts to crack down on the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Selig promoted Manfred last September to chief operating officer, but the role of putative next commissioner was one he had idled in since 2010, when the other potential heir to Selig's throne, Bob DuPuy, was pushed out in a power shift. That left Manfred in perfect form to follow the path the N.B.A. was taking. The longtime commissioner David Stern groomed his longtime deputy, Adam Silver, to take over upon his retirement, which took effect this year after he spent 30 years in charge, and the N.B.A. owners bought into the plan.
Manfred, like Silver, was not an outwardly dynamic choice, but he made sense if everyone was looking for a seamless transition. Instead, a group of baseball owners bristled, and a race was born.
That, in turn, has served to shine a sharper light on Manfred, 55, who, until now, has done a lot of his work in baseball's trenches. When he was fresh out of Harvard Law School in 1983, he clerked for a United States District Court judge, then settled into private practice with the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, specializing in labor law. He worked as outside counsel for Major League Baseball during the 1994 players' strike, then was hired by the league in 1998.
The 1994 strike was so damaging that both baseball and the union have worked hard since then to avoid another rupture. During that time, Manfred has overseen negotiations of new collective bargaining agreements in 2002, 2006 and 2011, as well as several instances in which the agreements were opened up to install tougher drug-testing protocols. Although other major team sports - football, basketball and hockey - have all endured work stoppages since 1994, baseball has not, and Manfred, naturally, gets some of the credit.
Still, all that labor peace has left at least a few owners with the belief that baseball - and by extension, Manfred - has been too conciliatory toward the union. They want a candidate who might take a harder line, as well as someone, perhaps, with more of a business acumen. So Manfred now faces challengers to the throne once thought to be his without much debate.
Tom Werner
Werner's sudden emergence as a plausible candidate for baseball commissioner actually manages to fit in the unlikely arc - or series of arcs - of Werner's unusual career.
Werner, 64, could have forever rested on his achievements as a television producer, having played a pivotal role in launching the careers of not only Robin Williams, but also Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal and Danny DeVito. He did so as director of development for ABC, which long ago landed him in the Television Hall of Fame. But eventually, he veered into baseball.
His first stint as an owner, as the managing director of a group that bought the San Diego Padres in 1990, was an unmitigated calamity, and he managed to repair his reputation only after he teamed with John Henry and Larry Lucchino to take over the Boston Red Sox in 2002. Three World Series championships - along with his successful oversight of the regional sports network NESN - have given Werner enough status to turn him into a seemingly viable candidate to replace Selig.
This twist stuns Padres fans, who remember Werner's four-year reign in San Diego with lingering bitterness. The starting lineup was decimated by what fans called the Fire Sale of 1993, when Gary Sheffield, Fred McGriff, Bruce Hurst, Greg Harris, Craig Lefferts, Randy Myers, Benito Santiago, Tony Fernandez, Mike Maddux and Darrin Jackson were all traded or allowed to leave via free agency. This came after Werner said the Padres lost millions of dollars in 1992.
All of this prompted Padres season-ticket holders, whose first impression of Werner was his choice of Roseanne Barr to sing perhaps the worst national anthem in sports history in 1990, to file a class-action suit against the team. The Padres had sent a letter to fans in the off-season saying they would make a maximum effort to re-sign Jackson, then walked away when he won an arbitration hearing that awarded him $2.1 million.
As an owner of the Red Sox, Werner is credited with the success of NESN, which is co-owned by the Red Sox and the Bruins. Werner won local fans over when he pushed cable companies to remove NESN from a pay tier and make it a part of basic cable. He has won over other large-market owners - including the Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and the Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno, who have championed his candidacy - with his concerns about revenue sharing, wanting to keep NESN profits benefiting the Red Sox.
And he has won over the general public in Boston by keeping Barr away from it all.
Tim Brosnan
Of the three finalists for the commissioner's job, Brosnan has had the lowest profile despite working in Selig's office since 1991 and being involved in every broadcasting, sponsorship and marketing licensing deal for the past 10 years. Those deals do not put him in the public eye much, but they do place him close to baseball owners' hearts or, more specifically, their wallets.
With baseball's broadcast contracts more than doubling in value in the past eight years and overall revenue cracking the $8 billion mark for the first time last year, the success of baseball on the business side lifts Brosnan's stock just as if he were, well, a stock.
And with attendance flattening in many places around baseball, owners are increasingly interested in revenue flowing in from as many sources as possible, which increases Brosnan's appeal even more. His appeal outside the commissioner's office might be an issue - no one has even bothered to create a Wikipedia page on him.
Since 2000, Brosnan has been baseball's executive vice president for business, following nine years as head of the league's international business affairs. That involved raising the status of the game overseas, in part by beginning and overseeing the World Baseball Classic. With baseball ousted from the Olympics - largely because the sport would not make major leaguers available to play in the event, as the N.H.L. and N.B.A. do - the Classic became the game's biggest international tournament.
Brosnan, who is 56, played baseball at Georgetown University for four years before attending Fordham Law School. His pre-baseball law career included being appointed in 1987 by Gov. Mario Cuomo to the New York State Commission for Government Integrity.
Brosnan clearly knows the business side of baseball, and if Werner and Manfred end up blocking each other, he could emerge as the compromise choice, an insider who knows how to make money.
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