Owners extend Selig’s contract

PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. – Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said he couldn’t resist the pleas of team owners for him to stay on the job. His wife, Sue, has said all along there was no way her husband would walk away from the game.

In the end, she was right.

Owners voted, 29-1, on Thursday to give Selig a two-year contract extension through the 2014 season.

Selig has held the position since 1992, first as interim commissioner and then as commissioner since 1998. He will turn 80 in July 2014.

If he stays until September 2016, he would surpass Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1920-44) as the longest-serving baseball commissioner.

“I’ve often said, and I believe this, for me personally in my life there’s no higher honor than being the commissioner of baseball,” Selig said.

Selig’s contract had been slated to expire this Dec. 31, and he had talked of doing some teaching after leaving the job. But he said he began hearing lately from owners who wanted him to stay on.

“I started hearing a couple of weeks ago that there was a groundswell movement to do this,” he said. “ ‘You can’t leave now.’ I’d hear from various owners.”

He said he reached the decision after thinking about it over the holidays, although he acknowledged his wife had been right when she said all along that he wouldn’t be stepping down this year.

“In the end, doing what’s in the best interest of baseball – if this many people believe that and feel that – is something that I felt I should do,” he said.