Major League Baseball owners elected Rob Manfred as the league’s next commissioner on Thursday. Manfred, a high-ranking MLB executive, who most recently served as the league’s chief operating officer, was being groomed by outgoing commissioner Bud Selig to take over the top spot.
Manfred will become baseball’s tenth commissioner when Selig steps down, after beating out Boston Red Sox owner, Tom Werner, and MLB executive vice president for business, Tim Brosnan. The new commissioner-in-waiting will take over a league that Selig has steered for two decades and, the New York Times notes, “[u]nder Mr. Selig’s watch, Major League Baseball has grown into a flourishing business that brings in $8 billion in annual revenue.” Despite that financial boom, Selig’s legacy will also be tied to baseball’s performance enhancing drug era. Here’s more from the Times on Manfred’s history in MLB:
Mr. Manfred was set up to be Selig’s handpicked successor, the faithful deputy who had played important behind-the-scenes roles since he began working for baseball on a full-time basis full time in 1998. For 15 of those years, he was an executive vice president, in charge of both labor relations that were devoid of any work stoppages and the sport’s increasing efforts to crack down on the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
