Alan Truex: Selig blocked Bush from being commissioner
When Bud Selig was the acting baseball commissioner and George W. Bush was president of the Texas Rangers and his dad was president of the United States, I wondered why the commish never made much use of Bush the Younger. Whenever various committee chairmen were announced, Bush was never one of the chosen.
I wondered why the sport’s power brokers were men named Reinsdorf and Steinbrenner and Angelos and not Bush. It seemed so obvious that as war with the Players Association was erupting, Bush would be a valuable ally for Major League Baseball.
Washington connections are helpful for all industries. But especially for baseball, which has a ridiculous but cherished interstate commerce exemption dating to 1922. That’s when the Supreme Court ruled that baseball is not bound by the Sherman Antitrust Act because it’s not engaged in a significant amount of interstate commerce.
In the opinion of Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, it depends on what the meaning of “commerce” is. Baseball, his court determined, isn’t commerce, it’s entertainment. It’s the national pastime. Well, it was then.
And even as it lost popularity to other sports, and as its interstate commerce expanded (tickets mailed across state lines, games televised on nationwide networks, etc.), the lonely exemption has withstood challenge. At the Supreme Court in 1953. And again in ’72.
The exemption grants baseball monopolistic privileges that no other industry enjoys. For example, the Oakland A’s want to move to San Jose, but the San Francisco Giants can block them because of baseball’s antitrust exemption. The Giants would like to push the A’s out of California.
By contrast, the Oakland Raiders go wherever the Davis family wants to move them, because the NFL has no antitrust exemption.
But Congress can remove that exemption even if the Court won’t. So it always behooves MLB to be on good terms with judges, senators, congressmen, presidents and, yes, presidents’ sons.
I had a nodding acquaintance with GW Bush when he ran the Rangers and I covered baseball for the Houston Chronicle. Along with most of the other Texas ballwriters, I liked him. He was friendly and accessible, often chatting with reporters during pregame batting practice.
We liked his self-deprecating humor. He often spoke about his authorizing “the dumbest trade ever” that sent Sammy Sosa to the White Sox shortly before he erupted into a record-setting slugger. Neither Bush nor anyone else could have any idea what chemical enhancements an athlete might discover in the 1990s.
In late 1993, Selig, the acting commissioner who was professing no interest in permanence, announced another round of committee chairs. And once again, no Bush. So I confronted Selig and asked him why my fellow Texan got no appointment to anything.
“Because he’s going to run for governor.”
I hadn’t heard. I called a Chronicle reporter on the politics beat and was told the announcement was expected soon. I was surprised. If he was unworthy of a committee chair in MLB, I could not conceive of Bush as governor, much less President.
Bush had struck me as just another undistinguished presidential son, of which this country has had many. Prior to his fling in baseball, W had failed in the oil business despite a setup from his very successful dad. The son ran an oil company aptly named Arbusto that went bust-o at a time when the rest of the oil patch was booming.
But George W. Bush is resilient and versatile. He made himself useful in his father’s presidency. And after his Washington experience a door magically opened for him in baseball, and he did not stumble this time. it was easy to sense his passion for the game and his marketing imagination and dexterity.
Murray Chass, who covered baseball for The New York Times, wrote: “I was not a fan of Bush 43 but I did like Bush as managing general partner of the Texas Rangers. He would have been a good commissioner.”
Who knows, with his ability to connect with those who mostly disagreed with him (Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton), Bush might have prevented the canceling of the 1994 World Series, the most damaging event in baseball history.
Bush befriended Selig – or thought he did. But Chass, inspired by the recent death and celebration of the first President Bush, posted a blog explaining Selig’s strange maneuvering. “So he himself could become commissioner.”
Throughout 1993, Bush “repeatedly told Selig he had to make a decision – baseball or politics. But Selig repeatedly procrastinated. Finally, Bush could wait no longer and opted for the Texas gubernatorial race.”
Chass reveals a recent conversation he had with Fay Vincent, the commissioner who was supplanted by Selig and Reinsdorf in a 1992 coup. Vincent said Bush called him “some months after I left baseball,” when “Bud Selig was acting commissioner even though he was owner of the Milwaukee Brewers — in my opinion, a walking conflict of interest.
“George said: ‘Selig tells me he would love for me to be commissioner, and he can deliver it.’ I said, ‘George, my guess is that Selig wants the job himself.’”
Chass reaches a conclusion that does not seem far-fetched: “Without Selig’s procrastination, Bush would have been baseball commissioner and Al Gore might have been president.”
That theory fits what sources close to the Bushes have said, that the family plan was for Jeb Bush to become president and for his older brother George to be baseball commissioner.
What does seem far-fetched is that W could have been so naïve. Didn’t he wonder, as I did, and Vincent did, why the commissioner kept snubbing him? I like to think it was modesty and humility on the future President’s part.
My guess is that Chass is correct, that Selig’s plan all along was to become permanent commissioner, which happened for him in 1998. By then, his friend George was looking at the presidency, which he attained in 2000. Which led, eventually, to a successful career as a portrait painter. “A surprisingly adept artist,” wrote The New York Times critic. What a winding road.
