As a certified Baseball Hall of Fame voter, I hereby make a motion to vote Bud Selig out the hallowed halls of Cooperstown.
Reggie Jackson’s statements Thursday on Howard Stern’s radio program brought to mind how Selig sold the Oakland Athletics franchise and the city of Oakland down the river in 2005, a move that plagues the team and city to this very moment.
The various stories are conflicting and in dispute, and many details are murky or buried forever, but here are two truths you can take to the bank:
• When A’s co-owners Steve Schott and Ken Hofmann decided to sell their team in ’05, Selig hand-selected the buyer, his old college frat brother Lew Wolff. Wolff partnered with his good friend John Fisher, who was then a minority owner of the Giants. Fisher bought 70% of the A’s, Wolff 30%.
• Fisher’s ownership has been a disaster. (He bought out Wolff and became sole owner in 2016). Fisher not only made the team into a low-rent operation that has floundered comically in its pursuit of a Bay Area ballpark, but he now threatens to move the team out of Oakland unless the city takes a huge risk to help him build a massive real-estate development.
Jackson’s story on Stern’s radio show was titillating, but not new. A decade ago, Reggie first went public with how he and his big-money partners (including Paul Allen and Bill Gates!) offered $25 million more than Fisher/Wolff had agreed to pay for the A’s, but were rejected by Selig.
I phoned Wolff to get his version of events, but all he would say on the record is, “I hope everyone fact-checked this, including Howard Stern. Did anyone ask Bill Gates?”
It is true that Jackson’s group made an offer. In Schott’s autobiography “Long Schott” (written with Chronicle sportswriter John Shea), he confirms that Jackson’s group did offer to pay $25 million over whatever Fisher/Wolff were offering.
“But by the time Reggie contacted me, we had a deal (with Wolff/Fisher) in place,” Schott wrote, adding, “It would have been great and historic for Reggie to be part of the ownership group, as the first African American owner. … But I had to commit to the deal with the Fishers and baseball and couldn’t chase the last dollar.”
There are those who might question whether Schott is that great of a guy, turning down considerable money so as not to renege on a handshake deal, but there seems to be agreement that the Jackson group’s bid did come in late in the game.
But what about Joe Lacob? The man who now owns the Golden State Warriors told Shea that he (Lacob) had a verbal agreement to buy the A’s back then, but “Bud Selig … basically did not approve of Schott and Hofmann selling the team to someone he didn’t know or (couldn’t) control.”
Lacob said Selig took Lacob’s term sheet to Wolff/Fisher and basically said, Just match Lacob’s price.
Why didn’t Selig study all the potential ownership groups, determine each one’s vision for the team, see what kind of stewards they would be? Had he done that, Selig could have then steered the sale to the group he felt would best serve the interests of baseball and Oakland.
Let us speculate why Selig simply handed the deal to Wolff/Fisher:
Selig wanted to do a solid for his old frat buddy. Wolff. They really are good pals.
Or, maybe Selig wanted an A’s owner he could control. He may have seen Reggie Jackson as a loose cannon, and he may have seen Lacob as a nouveau riche venture capitalist hotshot who would upset baseball’s staid old boys’ club.
Whatever his motive, Selig handed the A’s on a platter to a primary owner who would prove over the years that his primary goal was to squeeze every ounce of profit out of the team, regardless of the effect on the product and on the host city and its ball fans.
Here’s what Selig once said: “I learned that the best interests of the game are the most important thing. They transcend my best interests, your best interests and everybody else’s.”
Yet for years, Selig aided and abetted the A’s blundering in search of a new ballpark, and the degradation of the A’s franchise to its current state.
Selig was voted into the Hall of Fame in 2017 by a Today’s Era Committee, because during his nearly quarter-century running the show, MLB expanded and made huge gains in media contracts and overall worth.
If you want to argue that Selig played a huge role in those gains, go ahead. I will maintain that during Selig’s tenure, money for sports was falling from the sky, and Selig mostly stood holding a basket, like Willie Mays under a fly ball.
Maybe that’s selling Selig short, but selling short is exactly what he did with the Oakland A’s. He gave the team to Fisher, and it was a gift that keeps on taking.
Reach Scott Ostler: sostler@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @scottostler
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March 25, 2023 at 06:03PM
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Bud Selig deserves to lose Hall of Fame status for how he bungled A's sale - San Francisco Chronicle
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