Bud Selig

American baseball player, the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and current commissioner of professional baseball. Selig's path to the commissioner position has been a long and slow one. He was originally named to a ten-member pro baseball executive council in the early '90s whose purpose was to find a new commissioner. As the old commissioner had just left, Selig was the chairman.

Over the course of the early '90s, Selig gradually emerged as the de facto commissioner with each new decision made by the council. With each and every day he also became more and more involved with the everyday business of baseball.

A powerful commissioner, one of the factors that has made him so influential is his rapport with the owners. He was the chief architect of a bargaining strategy that helped to put a cap on player's salaries. This bargaining strategy back fired in 1994, however, when the salary cap proposal was first made-the players went on strike and there was no World Series for the first time in 90 years.

Likeable and friendly, Selig was born and raised in Milwaukee. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Wisconsin where he majored in history. Following college, he went to work for his father's automobile business. Quickly tiring of the auto industry and all that it had to offer, Selig turned his attention to baseball. By 1963 he was the third largest stockholder in the Milwaukee Braves, the area's professional baseball team at the time. After the Braves went to Atlanta, Selig was instrumental in acquiring the bankrupt Seattle Pilots for Milwaukee.