Bud Selig has never looked better than he does right now. On Wednesday, he seized control of the troubled Los Angeles Dodgers, the kind of decisive, assertive action that should define the office of the commissioner of baseball. If he has often seemed beleaguered during more than 18 years in the job, Selig now stands tall.
“This game has never been more prosperous than it’s been today,” said Steve Stone, the former Cy Young Award winner and longtime broadcaster, now with the White Sox. “He saw to it that so many new stadiums were built. Bud, I do believe, has only one goal in mind with whatever he does and that’s for the good of baseball. Is everybody right? No, but it’s an impossible job to do.”
It seemed that way in Selig’s early years, characterized by the cancellation of the 1994 World Series, a 1995 season that nearly started with replacement players posing as real teams, and the rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs. Now there is labor peace – in stark contrast to the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. – and baseball has a drug program with teeth.
“Even if he got religion late, he got it wholeheartedly,” said MLB Network’s Bob Costas, who has differed with Selig over the years. “No other sport subjected itself to the Mitchell Report. He’s done a lot of things in the second half, or later two-thirds, of his tenure that really should, in fairness, improve his legacy.”
Last week in Milwaukee, I spent an afternoon with Selig, interviewing him in his corner office, 30 stories above downtown, overlooking Lake Michigan, and then attending his lecture at the Marquette University Law School. It was Selig’s fourth and final session of the semester with a class studying professional sports law. Teaching is a passion for Selig, as I explain in this story.
Baseball’s collective-bargaining agreement expires at the end of the season, and Selig, 76, has a contract that expires after the 2012 season. He said he plans to retire then, to concentrate on teaching and writing his memoirs. In our interview, he spoke strongly about two priorities for the next C.B.A.
One is expanding the playoffs, and while Selig did not offer specifics – A one-game play-in between two wild card teams? A five- or seven-game series? – he explained why he favors the idea.
“I’m not quite there yet, because we have details to work out,” he said. “But do I like the concept? Yeah, very much. I think 10 out of 30 is fair. We’re only 8 out of 30 now. All the other sports have a lot more wild cards. I’ve studied it. I really think it helps us, I really do. I think there’s some clubs that haven’t gotten in the playoffs that deserve to get in. I’m always worried about the tradition, I’m always worried about the history. But 10 out of 30 I like.”
Selig said the season would not necessarily have to bleed into November to accommodate another playoff team. That would seem to suggest that a play-in game is a possibility – a concept I think could be a lot of fun, creating both more opportunity (because of the extra playoff entrant) and more of a handicap for playoff teams that do not finish first.
“I think if we’re doing our job properly, we’ll provide hope and faith in as many places as possible,” Selig said. “Now, we don’t want to artificially do it, but we want to do it fairly. And I think having 10 teams in the playoffs is fair.”
Another topic Selig insisted would be a high priority is banning smokeless tobacco, which is already banned in the minor leagues. Selig invoked Robin Yount, the star of the Brewers in the years he owned the team.
“The only problem I ever had with Robin Yount for 20 years – great player, great young man, great person off the field – is tobacco,” Selig said. “I talked to his mother, I talked to his father, I talked to his brother, but we couldn’t break him of the habit. But you talk to Joe Garagiola Sr. and doctors — boy, it’s awful. You bet it’s a very high priority — very. I want to underscore the very.”
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Kepner, who had covered the Yankees for The Times since 2002, is in his second year as the national baseball reporter. He joined The Times in 2000 as the Mets beat writer. A native of Philadelphia and a graduate of Vanderbilt University, Kepner has also covered the Angels for the Riverside Press-Enterprise in California and the Mariners for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children. 
Ben Shpigel is in his second year as the Yankees beat writer. He had covered the Mets for The Times since 2005. Before then, he was a staff writer for the Dallas Morning News for two years. He also worked at The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., and for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Shpigel received a bachelor's degree in English and journalism from Emory University and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. He and his wife, Rebecca, and their daughter, live in New Jersey. 
Belson covers the business of sports after many years of writing about the business of practically everything else for the Times, Business Week, Reuters and Bloomberg. During his 12 years living in Tokyo, he wrote about baseball, kick boxing, marathon running and football in Japan. Since returning to the United States, he managed to persuade his wife, who grew up near the Yomiuri Giants' old stadium, to find it in herself to root for the Mets.
Sablich has produced news and multimedia for The New York Times since July 2006 after earning a master’s degree in new media from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He was born in Binghamton, N.Y. and resides in Queens. Sablich is still traumatized from his first trip to Yankee Stadium as a child when the Yankees starter Tim Leary was torched by the White Sox for 7 runs in one and two-thirds innings on Old-Timers' Day, July 15, 1990. 