Pessah - The game: inside the secret world of major league baseballs power brokers

T HE BESPECTACLED 66 -YEAR-OLD man in the blue blazer, white shirt, and red tie is walking across the thin stretch of grass between the first baseline and the home-team dugout. His name is Bud Selig, and its several hours before his favorite team takes the field for batting practice. Selig usually enjoys being surrounded by people, but this quiet period before a baseball game is one of the Commissioners favorites. Its April 6, 2001, and only a few stadium workers dot the stands. Hes not sure if its the serenity of the moment, the simple beauty of the manicured field, or the sweep of the grandstand that evokes the games past. But for a man who has a lifelong love affair with baseball, it feels like walking into a cathedral.

He glances over at the pitchers mound, his blue eyes squinting, and marvels at just how high it rises and how gosh-darn close it feels to home plate. He looks beyond the mound to the green walls stretched across the sprawling outfield. Even on his best days growing up on Milwaukees ball fields, he could never knock a ball over those fences. No; the players who could do that were gods.

Theres much about the game he cherishes, though maybe not as much as he did in the 70s, when he was a young owner and the game seemed simpler. So much has changed, so many battles have been fought, so much blood spilled. He often finds himself thinking back to 1992, when he led the revolt against his friend Commissioner Fay Vincent, took control of the game, and saved it. The game was in chaos back then. Yes, hed sacrificed a World Series, but it was his good judgment, his innovations, and his political skillespecially his political skillthat brought the game back to life. Hes sure of that.

Baseball is too important a social institution to failisnt that what hes told every fan, reporter, and lawmaker ever since? If that werent true, how had he been able to help raise billions in taxpayer money to build baseball stadiums? The game has 11 sparkling new stadiums because Selig persuaded local governments to give him what he wantedwhat he neededto keep baseball alive in their cities.

Nowhere is that more true than here in Milwaukee, where the stadium closest to his heart is finally ready. In a few hours the first pitch will be thrown at the $414 million Miller Park. There are still many in this town who bitterly resent bailing out his debt-ridden team, but even the harshest critics admire the architectural wonder hes given them.

Seligs eyes roam his teams new home. The one-of-a-kind fan-shaped retractable roof. A plaza lined with restaurants, shops, and luxury suites. Soaring brick archways that keep the promise voiced in the Brewers new promotional video: Miller Park, where a fan cant help but feel the reincarnation of baseballs romantic past.

Selig walks a few steps down the baseline, his hands in his pockets, his slight slouch familiar to any baseball fan. How many times has he already watched the six-minute promo? He loves the clip of Hank Aaron and the Braves winning the 57 World Series and the celebration that followedthe first and last the towns enjoyed during its 50 years of baseball. And the clip of Robin Yount getting his 3,000th hit in a Brewers uniform. Hes especially fond of the final passage, which will soon play on the 48-foot-wide screen in center field.

Miller Park will create a barn fire of passion for the team. The eyes of the baseball world will focus on Milwaukee, and talk of the inadequacies of small market baseball will give way to praise and the recollection of a time when fans lived and died with their team and the team waged battle for their fans. A time when loyalty to the grand old game was shared equally between players, owners, fans, and corporations.

Selig smiles. He was the towns 35-year-old boy wonder when he brought baseball back to Milwaukee in 1970. His reward: a team to run as he saw fit. Now he stands in his new stadium, running not just his team but also his entire sport.

Selig takes one more look around the park, then walks slowly into the Brewers dugout. He ambles through a series of tunnels and onto an elevator that brings him up to the .300 Club, where his friends and the citys leaders are gathered to celebrate the place that took him almost 15 years to build. He spends a few hours there, shaking hands and accepting congratulations, until word comes that he is needed back downstairs.

Its time to greet the man who once believed he would become the Commissioner of baseball.

President George W. Bush is working his way through Miller Parks visitors locker room surrounded by Secret Service agents and White House reporters. Just 24 hours earlier, Bush was in D.C., where the popular new President pushed Congress closer to passing his $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut. Hed promised his old friend Buddy that hed throw out the first pitch the night Miller Park opened, and it was a promise he planned to keep.

So hed flown into Milwaukee on Air Force One earlier this afternoon with Laura, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and his Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, the former Wisconsin governor who helped build Buds stadium. And now Bush is doing what he loveshanging with major league players, sharing stories of his days running the Texas Rangers, and autographing a baseball for Hall of Famer Rod Carew, now the Brewers hitting coach.

Somethings wrong with this picture, me signing this for you, Bush tells Carew as he hands him the baseball. Everyone laughs. Bush is radiant in his black cowboy boots and dark slacks, a blue satin Brewers warm-up jacket pulled over a 40-pound flak vest. Hes smiling broadly as he shakes hands with player after player.