At the quarterly Owners Meetings earlier today, Bud Selig announced the formation of a committee to help determine his eventual successor as commissioner of Major League Baseball, Paul Hagen of MLB.com writes.
The succession committee, according to Hagen, will be overseen by Cardinals chairman and CEO Bill DeWitt Jr. and consist of six other owners: Dick Monfort (Rockies), Dave Montgomery (Phillies), Arte Moreno (Angels), Bob Nutting (Pirates), Jim Pohlad (Twins) and Jerry Reinsdorf (White Sox). While no official timeline is known, the committee will eventually present candidate(s) to all 30 Major League owners. Candidates will require an 80 percent vote (24 of 30) to pass and be named commissioner.
Selig said that the committee will consider people from both inside the game and outside the game, but there won’t be much information made available to the public. “[T]he process goes much more smoothly if there isn’t all kinds of speculation,” said Selig. “We’re not going to announce when we get a list together or who the potential candidates are, whom we’ve talked to or any of that.”
Ken Davidoff of the New York Post also touched on the formation of the committee, noting again that Selig’s preference seems to be for current MLB COO Rob Manfred to fill his shoes, though that will be up to the committee to decide. DeWitt did tell Davidoff that Selig’s opinion would have a definite impact on the search: “We’d be remiss if we didn’t ask his opinion along the way.” DeWitt would not rule out the possibility of a current owner, perhaps even one of the committee members, being nominated as a candidate.
Selig, who assumed his current role on an interim basis in September of 1992, was the owner of of the Brewers prior to being named commissioner. As Hagen notes, he was eventually unanimously named the official commissioner in July 1998.
