Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig to retire in January of 2015
By Bryan Rose
Depending on your views, this is either wonderful or terrible news.
According to Jon Heyman of CBS Sports, Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig will announce later today that he plans to retire, effective January of 2015.
Per Heyman:
"Bud Selig will today announce formally he’s retiring, effective in January 2015"
Selig, who became commissioner in 1992, was actually set to retire after the 2012 season however he decided against it and signed a new two year contract.
Now with that contract set to expire after the 2014 season, Selig plans to call it quits come the calendar turnover into 2015.
While Selig’s reign over the league has been marred in controversy, which includes the PED/steroid era in addition to the 1994 strike, Selig has also made some large positive contributions, which include (per Wikipedia):
"Realignment of teams into three divisions per league, and the introduction of playoff wild card teams (1994)Interleague play (1997)Two additional franchises: the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, now the Tampa Bay Rays (1998)Transfer of the Milwaukee Brewers from the American League to the National League (1998)Abolition of the American and National league offices and presidencies, and inclusion of all umpiring crews into a common pool for AL and NL games, instead of having separate pools per league (2000)Unbalanced schedule (2001)Home field advantage in the World Series granted to the winner of the All Star Game in the same season (2003)Transfer of Montreal Expos franchise to Washington, D.C., becoming the Washington Nationals (2004)Dedicating April 15 as Jackie Robinson Day (2004)Stricter Major League Baseball performance-enhancing drug testing policy (2005)World Baseball Classic (2006)Introduction of instant replay in the event of a disputed home run call (2008)Introducing a second wild card playoff team in each league (2012)Requiring the Houston Astros to move to the American League (2013), as a condition of the sale of the team to Jim Crane, resulting in an odd number of teams in each league and interleague play throughout the season"