Living Legends
Commissioner emeritus
Major League Baseball | Milwaukee
Lifelong Milwaukee resident Allan H. “Bud” Selig led Major League Baseball from 1992 until his retirement in 2015. Decades before he became MLB commissioner, Selig was instrumental in bringing major league baseball back to Milwaukee. After the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966, Selig led a group that sought to bring another MLB team to Milwaukee, acquiring the Seattle Pilots and moving them to Milwaukee in 1970 to become the Milwaukee Brewers. The high point of Selig’s ownership of the Brewers was the team’s 1982 American League championship and only World Series appearance in franchise history.
Selig also led the controversial fight to build the stadium now known as American Family Field in the 1990s.
Selig was named chairman of MLB’s executive council in 1992, effectively serving as interim commissioner until he was officially installed six years later. During his tenure, the game’s annual revenues grew from $1.2 billion to $9 billion. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017.
Today, Selig is a Distinguished Professor of Sports in America at Arizona State University and a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Marquette University. He endowed the Allan H. Selig Chair in the History of Sport and Society in the United States and the Distinguished Lecture Series in Sport and Society at UW-Madison in 2010.
He and his wife, Suzanne, support arts and education in the Milwaukee community, including the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee Film, the Milwaukee Public Library and UW-Milwaukee, among other organizations.
Education: Bachelor’s, UW-Madison