Bud Selig’s Parent: Meet Marie Selig and Ben Selig- The 89-year-old American sports executive Bud Selig is an MLB commissioner from 1992 who introduced the Wild Card and Interleague Play.
Who are Bud Selig’s Parents?
His parents immigrated to the United States shortly after the turn of the century as youngsters from Eastern Europe. His father, Benjamin, was from Romania, and his mother, Marie (Huber) Selig, was born in the Ukraine. They married in 1929 and raised two sons, Jerome and Allan.
Ben was a car salesman for the Mertz-Knippel Co., owned by Otto Mertz and Ray Knippel, before partnering with Ray to form Knippel-Selig Ford. Marie taught third and fourth grades at Lee Street School (later renamed Sherman School), which her sons attended. She was an avid baseball fan and took Allan, whom she called Bud, to watch the local minor-league Brewers at nearby Borchert Field or to Chicago to watch White Sox games, especially when the New York Yankees were in town. Joe DiMaggio was Bud’s boyhood idol. After attending Steuben Junior High School and Washington High School on Milwaukee’s West Side, Selig attended the University of Wisconsin/Madison.
Allan Huber “Bud” Selig was born on July 30, 1934, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Raised in a Jewish household, Bud started attending baseball games with his older brother and mother at the age of three. During this time, he watched the Milwaukee Brewers play in the minor league for the first time. Selig eventually attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned a B.A. in American history and political science.
After graduating from college in 1956, Bud spent two years in the army before taking a job in a car leasing business owned by his father. To this day, Bud remains somewhat involved in the car leasing industry. Eventually, Selig became the largest public shareholder of the Braves when they moved to Milwaukee, although he would divest his stock when they relocated away to Atlanta. When the Braves played in Milwaukee, Selig developed a close relationship with many of their players due to the family’s car leasing company’s connections.
Selig’s baseball career began in earnest when he tried to bring a successful, major league baseball team to Milwaukee. After many attempts, he eventually purchased the Brewers and lifted them back into the major league. He continued to act as president and owner until he became president in 1992, at which point he transferred ownership to his daughter in order to avoid conflict of interest allegations. That being said, it was widely rumored that Selig still had some form of control over the team while he was Commissioner.
Bud Selig first became Commissioner of Baseball in 1992 after many years of vocal opposition to then-Commissioner Fay Vincent. When Vincent resigned, Selig became de facto acting Commissioner because of his previous position as the Chairman of the Executive Council of Major League Baseball. During this period, he introduced the concept of the Wild Card, and he also instituted divisional playoff play.
His biggest controversy came in 2005 when he faced a Congress hearing on the subject of steroid use in baseball. Although he proposed stricter regulations on performance-enhancing drugs, his testimony was later found to be contradictory. Among other things, he claimed to be unaware of steroid use by 1988, and yet in another statement, he claimed to be addressing the issue in 1994. Despite this controversy, Bud’s contract was extended multiple times before he finally stepped down at the end of the 2014 season.
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