Bud Selig speaks before a baseball game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago Cubson Sept. 26, 2014.Morry Gash/The Associated Press
On the day he was put in charge of baseball in 1992, Bud Selig said his new job was "hopefully relatively short-term.
"But if you're asking me what relatively short-term means, obviously this morning I don't know," he said.
Maintaining power for more than 22 years, Selig oversaw a revolution in baseball that included interleague play, the expansion of the playoffs from four teams to eight and then 10, dividing each league into three divisions with wild cards, instituting video review to aid umpires, revenue-sharing to help small-market teams and 20 new big-league ballparks.
He also presided over the first cancellation of the World Series in 90 years, an attempt to use replacement players for striking big leaguers and the unchecked rise and later crackdown on illegal steroids. He was head of baseball's labour policy when owners were found to have conspired against free agents.
Selig's imprint was recognized Sunday when the 82-year-old was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Today's Game Era Committee.
"We were a sport resistant to change," Selig said. "I believe in those years as commissioner, that's the most change in baseball history."
Revenue rose from about $1.7-billion (U.S.) in 1992 to just under $9-billion in his final season.
Long-time general manager John Schuerholz was also elected to the hall.
Schuerholz was picked by all 16 voters Sunday on a veterans committee at the winter meetings. Selig was listed 15 times.
Schuerholz was general manager of the Atlanta Braves when they won a record 14 successive division titles. He was the first GM to run teams that took World Series crowns in both leagues, winning with Kansas City in 1985 and Atlanta in 1995.
Harold Baines, Albert Belle, Will Clark, Orel Hershiser, Davey Johnson, Mark McGwire, Lou Piniella and George Steinbrenner also were on the ballot considered by the Today's Game Era panel.
Selig and Schuerholz will be enshrined July 30 in Cooperstown, N.Y. It will be Selig's 83rd birthday.
Selig became the fifth of the 10 commissioners major league baseball has had to be voted to the Hall, joining Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1920-44), Happy Chandler (1945-51), Ford Frick (1951-65) and Bowie Kuhn (1969-84). Every commissioner who has served at least five years is in Cooperstown.
"I'm happy for him. I think it's deserved," said Fay Vincent, the commissioner Selig helped force out. "I think that after '94, Bud really got the point very clearly. I think Bud realized in '94 there was no point in trying to test the union anymore."
Selig headed the group that purchased the Seattle Pilots in bankruptcy court in 1970 and moved the team to Milwaukee. A protégé of Detroit owner John Fetzer, he became chairman of the owners' Player Relations Committee in the early 1980s and directed strategy at a time owners were found to have colluded against players during three off-seasons, leading teams to pay players a $280-million settlement.
Assisted by Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, Selig was appointed to the newly created position of chairman of baseball's executive council two days after Vincent's resignation.
"Even I didn't understand the dimension of the problems that we faced at that time," Selig said.
He repeatedly said he never would become commissioner, but he blocked Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush from taking the job, leading Bush to run for governor of Texas and later president.