Let’s have an inter-sport lottery. It won’t cost you a penny, but then you won’t win anything either. Competing is the prize. It’ll be fun, and it’ll last a long time. We probably won’t know the outcome for at least a couple of years. This is the lottery of the commissioners.

Which commissioner will retire first, Bud Selig or David Stern?

The game is prompted by Stern’s declaration this past weekend that he planned to retire sooner rather than later. The National Basketball Association chief offered no specific time but said he would retire before the new labor deal expires, which could happen in 2017.

Instant speculation was that Stern, who has been commissioner since 1984, would step down much sooner than that, perhaps within two years.

Selig, whose retirement always comes later than sooner, has already missed three retirement dates, accepting an extension of his tenure each time. The latest extension takes him through the 2014 season.

Baseball officials and executives I spoke with believe this time it will be for real, that Selig, commissioner in some fashion since 1992, will retire in three years. These are the reasons:

• He could have had a five-year extension but said no to that length.
• He will be 80 years old.
• He wants to be here when he is elected to the Hall of Fame, and that can’t happen until six months after he has retired, meaning his earliest induction couldn’t be until July 2016.
• He wants out before the current labor agreement expires following the 2016 season. The long-range forecast is that the next labor negotiation will be “brutal,” to use the word of one executive, and Selig won’t risk his legacy of having presided over more than two decades of labor peace.

But the primary point of this exercise isn’t to speculate on when Selig might retire but whether, when he does announce his retirement, he will follow Stern’s example by announcing who his choice would be as his successor.

Stern spoke so strongly in support of his deputy commissioner, Adam Silver, as his successor that it seemed as though he made the announcement about his retirement just to make his endorsement publicly and get Silver’s name out there.

Selig doesn’t have a deputy to endorse. In fact, it’s not very likely that he would endorse anyone. Selig likes to rule by consensus, and consensus could be difficult to achieve for a successor. Election requires assent from 23 of the 30 owners. There is widespread skepticism out there that any candidate could get 23 votes.

There is another problem. Anyone who might want to be considered for the job can’t disclose his interest publicly or privately. You might call it Selig’s law.

The commissioner doesn’t like anyone speaking about his job as long as he has it and until is certain he no longer wants it.

I’ve recalled this example previously, but it remains instructive. When Selig was only the acting or interim commissioner in the mid-1990s, after the owners induced Fay Vincent to resign as commissioner, he repeatedly, almost daily, said he didn’t want the job permanently. Selig said it so often and so convincingly that some people believed him.

Len Coleman was one of them. Then the National League president in the days when the leagues had separate presidents, Coleman figured if Selig didn’t want to be commissioner, he would throw his hat into the ring. He quietly let some N.L. owners know he would be interested.

Not that any of the owners acted to block him, but word got to Selig that Coleman was on the prowl, and that ended Coleman’s future in Major League Baseball.

In the same period, George Bush was the managing partner of the Texas Rangers but also had interest in becoming the commissioner. He let Selig know of his interest, and when time passed with no response, he asked about it. This went on for a while, and Bush finally told Selig he had to know because Republicans in Texas wanted him to run for governor and he had to give them an answer.

You can guess the rest. Selig became commissioner and Bush became president.

Selig has denied this story, has denied knowing that Bush was interested in being commissioner, but Bush years ago related it to a person who told me and whom I consider an unimpeachable source.

More recently, there was Bob DuPuy. A Milwaukee lawyer who did legal work for M.L.B., DuPuy became baseball’s president and chief operating officer in 2002. He resigned in 2010.

There is a widespread belief in baseball that DuPuy resigned as a result of a fight with Selig over his retirement. DuPuy, the belief was, thought that Selig was going to retire and he’d succeed him. The two men supposedly got into a fight, and DuPuy was out.

DuPuy vehemently, if not angrily, denied the story.

“Absolutely not,” he said in a telephone interview, agitated that anyone would say he left out of anger with Selig. “You can’t get anyone who would attribute that statement to me. I said I was happy doing my job. I agreed with Bud’s wife that he wouldn’t retire. It’s not true.”

Asked about the reasons for his departure, DuPuy said, “I’m not going to go into that. I’ve been gone a year and a half.”

DuPuy, his baseball career over, has divided himself into three parts. He is a partner at his old law firm, Foley & Lardner, he teaches law at Cornell Law School and he is a consultant with Evolution Media Capital, the investment banking arm of Creative Artists Agency.

He is not expected to be a candidate to succeed his friend Bud as commissioner despite Selig’s words of praise when he left:

“Bob has served Major League Baseball and its 30 clubs with diligence and dedication since he joined our offices in 1998.”His legal expertise has been invaluable in the resolution of numerous challenging issues that have faced our industry.”

Is there an obvious candidate or candidates? Among names that have been mentioned, though not by anyone who will be in the business of selecting the new commissioner, are present or former club executives Andy MacPhIail, Larry Lucchino and Dave Dombrowski.

An excellent candidate, not currently in baseball, would be Steve Greenberg, who was deputy commissioner under Vincent and now is a managing director at the investment bank Allen & Company with abundant involvement in the sale and purchase of baseball teams.

When the time comes, though, the No. 1 candidate may be Rob Manfred, the executive vice president for labor relations and human resources since 1998.

Besides Selig, Manfred has been the most visible executive from the commissioner’s office. He has been the face of baseball’s program against illegal performance-enhancing substances, and at times he speaks for Selig. In addition, he has established good relations with all of the teams with his involvement in salary arbitration and player contract negotiations.

“I think he’s got the best chance of anybody,” a veteran club executive said. “He’d be great.”

On the field, Ryan Braun is a winner. Last season he won the National League most valuable player award, led the league in slugging percentage and extra-base hits, was second in batting average, runs scored and total bases and was fourth in runs batted in.

Off the field, Braun is a loser. Last year he tested positive for a banned substance, and this year he won his appeal of the 50-game suspension he faced.

How does winning his appeal make him a loser? Read the newspapers:

“This was a legal fight, and Braun found a way to win,” Tyler Kepner wrote in The New York Times. “Does that make him innocent of cheating? We still do not know…. He won on a technicality; there’s no other way to say it.”

“He wasn’t exonerated. He was acquitted. There’s a difference,” Mike Lupica wrote in the New York Daily News.

In the New York Post, Joel Sherman wrote that Braun “is not a complete winner,” adding, “he does not walk out of this viewed as a clean player.”

What’s a guy to do? He’s guilty if he’s found to be guilty, and he’s guilty if he’s found to be innocent. The only difference in those outcomes apparently is Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers’ left fielder, won’t miss the first 50 games of the coming season.

Besides being viewed as guilty despite the arbitrator’s ruling that overturned the 50-game suspension, Braun faces even more insulting outrage from the news media.

Not content with disagreeing with the arbitrator’s decision, Kepner wants his pound of flesh. He wants Braun to tell the public what he did, why he did it and when he did it.

“Anything less than a full explanation will leave lingering doubts,” Kepner wrote, “at least among people who consider his case beyond the surface.”

Kepner’s arrogant demand is reminiscent of the clamoring of reporters for Alex Rodriguez to tell all after he acknowledged having used steroids, as if the admission were not sufficient – how often did he use steroids, did he inject them, if he did, who injected him and anything else any particular reporter wanted to know and thought Rodriguez was obliged to disclose.

I wondered at the time if any of those reporters would be willing to tell their readers – or their editors — if they ever reported or wrote an article under the influence of marijuana or cocaine. Right, I didn’t think so.

In declaring that Braun owes the public a “full explanation” of what he did, the Times’ Kepner prompted comparison with the much milder position he took on Barry Bonds last April after Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice but avoided further conviction when the jury deadlocked on three counts that he lied to a grand jury.

“The verdict in San Francisco does not help his cause,” Kepner wrote, “but it is peripheral to the Hall of Fame debate. Almost everybody believes Bonds used steroids, and more than a quarter of voters believe steroid use disqualifies a player from induction. There may be flaws with such logic, but that is reality.”

Nowhere in that statement or anywhere else in the column did the writer tell Bonds he had to allocute, to use a “Law and Order” term, about his obstruction of justice or perjury charges.

Besides my problem with the refusal of the news media to accept the arbitrator’s innocent verdict for Braun, I have an even bigger, a more general, one, dealing with what is supposed to be the confidentiality of the process.

There have been so many leaks in the case, from the identification of Braun Dec. 12 as having tested positive for an illegal substance through the arbitrator’s decision, that a very big umbrella would not be sufficient to keep those involved in the case from getting wet.

Everything about a drug case is supposed to be confidential. If a positive test comes up, the Montreal laboratory that conducted the test notifies the independent program administrator, who informs the commissioner’s office (Rob Manfred) and the union (Michael Weiner).

If the B sample confirms the positive test, the commissioner’s office tells the player it intends to take disciplinary action, and he tells the union if he wants to appeal the suspension. No announcement is made unless and until a player is suspended.

In Braun’s case, the public should have never known that he tested positive. But ESPN reported his positive test, citing two anonymous sources. I believe the network’s two reporters had two sources, one who originally told them about the positive test result and the other who confirmed the information they got from the first person.

Those people were obviously in a position to now the result, and I originally thought the primary source was in the commissioner’s office – who knows, maybe it was Manfred himself, the clubs’ chief labor lawyer – but I have been told that the commissioner’s office and the union know who it was, he has acknowledged being the source and he is not in either office.

When Selena Roberts reported three years ago that Rodriguez had used steroids, she cited four sources, and I didn’t believe it. Roberts reported that Rodriguez’ name was on a list of about 100 players who produced positive results in 2003 in what the clubs and players agreed would be anonymous testing.

There again was an instance of a betrayal of promised anonymity. A few more names from that list surfaced – Manny Ramirez, Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz – the result of a determined effort by a young reporter, the Times’ Michael Schmidt, to make a name for himself.

The only problem was that to get names Schmidt induced lawyers to violate a court order that sealed the list and prohibited anyone connected with the case from disclosing any of the names. Schmidt even wrote about his reporting strategy:

“The information about Ramirez and Ortiz emerged through interviews with lawyers and others connected to the pending litigation. The lawyers spoke anonymously because the testing information was under seal by a court order.”

Donald Fehr, then head of the union, said that what Schmidt did was a criminal act. “The leaking of information under a court seal is a crime,” Fehr said at the time. “The active pursuit of information that may not lawfully be disclosed because it is under court seal is a crime.”

However, Bill Keller, then the Times’ executive editor, dismissed Fehr’s view.

“The idea that ordinary journalistic inquiry constitutes criminal activity is ludicrous,” he said. “We ask people questions all the time that it would be imprudent or risky for them to answer. Whether or not they answer is up to them. Sometimes, whether out of civic-mindedness or for other reasons, they disclose information that powerful institutions intended to be secret. Sometimes we publish that information. It’s called journalism.”

A lawyer who is not involved in the confidentiality matter but is familiar with Schmidt’s effort to get names of players from the 2003 list said, “Schmidt wanted to find a law clerk who might not have been happy with his previous job and figured he might get him to talk.”

In the Braun instance, the Times was not alone in betraying others’ confidences. Everybody was doing it. In fact, everybody was doing it so much that the commissioner’s office and the Players Association issued statements saying their internal investigations found that no one in their offices was responsible for “the breach of confidentiality.”

There was one curious difference in the statements. Weiner, the union chief, said, “We are confident that it was not caused by the Commissioner’s Office, the MLBPA or anyone associated in any way with the Program.”

Speaking for the commissioner’s office, on the other hand, Manfred referred to the original leak of Braun’s test result and said only, “we are convinced that the leak did not come from the commissioner’s office.”

I wanted to ask Manfred why he limited his comment to his office, but when I called him Friday, his secretary said he was on a call and would have to call me back. He never did. Weiner called but declined to discuss the case, citing the confidential nature of the process.

Shyam Das, the independent arbitrator, whose vote turned the three-man panel’s decision in Braun’s favor, had instructed all of the witness before the two-day hearing last month not to discuss the case. At least some ignored him, based on newspaper reports.

Under the testing agreement, the arbitrator is obliged to issue a decision as soon as possible after the hearing, then provided a written decision within 30 days. But the decision was barely out of Das’ mouth when reporters were filling their stories with details of the case presented by Braun’s lawyers and the reasons behind Das’ decision.

“In a 2-1 vote,” the Daily News reported, “the panel that heard Braun’s appeal agreed that valid questions had been raised about the manner in which the test sample was handled.”

“Braun’s defense,” the News added, “centered around his claim that the test administered to him in the Brewers’ clubhouse on Saturday, Oct. 1 was compromised once it left the premises, including that after the urine sample was collected…it sat in the home of one of the collectors for two days before being shipped by FedEx” to the Montreal lab for analysis.

“The sample,” the report said, “was not brought to FedEx until that Monday afternoon, a delay on which the arbitrator apparently based his decision.”

“In a two-day hearing on Jan. 19 and 20,” the News continued, “Braun and his legal team raised the chain-of-custody issues and pointed out that the 28-year-old left fielder had never failed a test before, and that he easily passed another test not administered by MLB shortly after he was told of his positive test.”

According to the Times, “Braun’s defense team was successful in raising questions about how the tester stored Braun’s urine sample in his home refrigerator instead of taking it directly to a FedEx center for shipment to a laboratory in Montreal.”

The Times also quoted a “person with direct knowledge of the case” as saying “that none of the issues brought up on Friday by Braun were raised in the actual arbitration hearing on his case,” details of which weren’t supposed to be disclosed or discussed.

Continuing to discuss matters he wasn’t supposed to, the person told the Times, “No suggestion was made at that hearing…that the urine sample had been tampered with, and no questions were raised about the conduct or history of the collector involved.”

In addition, the Times reported, the “collector told the three-person arbitration panel that he kept the sample in his possession the entire weekend, according to a person in baseball familiar with his testimony.

That “person in baseball” either attended the hearing and had been instructed by the arbitrator not to say anything about it or was given details by someone who attended the hearing and was told not to discuss it.

Either way, Mr. Manfred, that and other comments on the hearing strain the credulity of your claim that no one in the commissioner’s office leaked anything.

And if additional skepticism is needed, consider an ESPN.com report:

“Although MLB officials would not comment on the record, sources told ESPN legal analyst Lester Munson they are still convinced that the sample tested came from Braun, and that the positive test result was correct. They emphasized that the FedEx package that arrived in the Montreal laboratory was sealed three times with tamper-proof seals — one on the box, one on a plastic bag inside the box, and again on the vial that contained the urine.”

And “The lab chief, an MLB source told Munson, testified that the urine was not tainted, that it was appropriate for testing, and that it tested positive for testosterone. The baseball officials, sources said, were incensed that Braun, his attorneys and the union successfully attacked the integrity of a collection procedure that is a ‘joint’ procedure.’”

No leak in the commissioner’s office? No, none at all, just a large sieve where a revolving door usually goes.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING FOR TORRE

Bud Selig has a method to his madness. It was demonstrated again last week when Joe Torre’s plan to be part of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ next ownership group fizzled.

Torre left his job as executive vice president for baseball operations to join Rick Caruso, a Los Angeles real estate developer, in a bid to but the Dodgers. The Caruso group, however, dropped out of the bidding when Caruso learned that the seller, Frank McCourt, a parking lot guy, would not include the lots at Dodger Stadium in the deal.

Caruso held out the possibility that he could re-enter the bidding if McCourt changed his mind about the parking lots. Torre, however, may not be in position long to wait with Caruso.

Torre resigned his baseball job Jan. 4, and since that was less than eight weeks ago, the job remains vacant. Selig just doesn’t move that quickly. Now, if he wants, he could very likely rehire Torre for his executive staff. Torre, after all, has no job and no team to buy.

CEO IS RIGHT: GAME IS BIGGER THAN GIANTS

If Larry Baer is a man of his word – and there’s no reason to think he isn’t – the San Jose problem should soon evaporate.

Baer, the San Francisco Giants’ president and chief executive officer, spoke to reporters at the team’s Scottsdale, Ariz., spring camp Friday and was naturally asked about San Jose. The city is in the Giants’ legal baseball territory but is coveted by the Athletics so they can move from Oakland and build a new park there. The Giants, however, have clung to the territory, claiming that it is integral to their economic health.

Just about three years ago Commissioner Bud Selig appointed a three-man team to study the area, even make a recommendation if it could. And if he wanted. But Selig has not asked for a recommendation. He says the committee is still doing its work.

In the meantime, Baer showed up in camp Friday and stirred the San Jose pot. It’s not that he said anything one way or the other, that the Giants would cede the city to the A’s or the Giants would have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a decision favorable to the A’s.

But he did say, “I’m going to be respectful of the process here. You know, I think that’s really important. The game is bigger than any internal machinations.”

If Baer really meant that – and maybe you had to be there to hear him say it — he should be prepared to say OK to the San Jose A’s. While the A’s would benefit from a move to San Jose, one of the largest markets in the country, Major League Baseball would be an even bigger beneficiary.

Reducing the Bay area to a one-team market would enhance the Giants’ revenue and open a new market for M.L.B. By not acknowledging that double play, the Giants are being selfish, stubborn, foolish and dumb. Losing Santa Clara County to the A’s would not impoverish the Giants, the team with the fifth highest M.L.B. revenue last season.

The teams have had more than enough time to settle the matter between them, but there can be no settlement if there are no talks, and the last I heard, the Giants hadn’t returned the A’s calls for more than a month. Has Selig become such an impotent leader that he can’t order Baer to call Lew Wolff, the A’s managing partner, whose behavior throughout this three-year fiasco has been exemplary?

With each passing week, Selig’s treatment of the San Jose issue becomes more shameful. In case he has forgotten the operable phrase, it’s “in the best interests of baseball.”  Its use is overdue.

News Item: Cubs, Red Sox agree; Selig still has no San Jose decision

Now that the Cubs and the Red Sox have relieved Bud Selig of the burden they placed on him by asking him to determine appropriate compensation for Theo Epstein, maybe the commissioner can decide a weightier matter – the dispute between the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants over the status of San Jose.

Just about three years have passed since Selig appointed a committee to study the San Jose situation, which should be more than enough time for any man who wants to make a decision to decide what his decision is.

Selig, however, is at his best when he is avoiding decisions, hoping that others will resolve the issues, as the Cubs and the Red Sox did months after asking him to decide whom the Cubs should give the Red Sox for allowing Epstein to leave Boston with a year left on his contract to became president of baseball operations for Chicago’s North Side team.

Following the announcement that the Red Sox would receive a relief pitcher, Chris Carpenter, the commissioner issued a statement, saying, “I am pleased that the Cubs and the Red Sox have resolved this matter.  It has always been my preference that Clubs resolve matters like this amongst themselves, as they understand their unique circumstances better than anyone else could. Though the matter required time, both Clubs demonstrated professionalism throughout their discussions, and I appreciate their persistence in finding common ground.”

Is Selig demonstrating professionalism by letting the Athletics twist in the wind? I would say he’s demonstrating irresponsible and amateur avoidance. Selig always says he’d rather take his time and get it right than rush into a decision. Three years, however, doesn’t constitute rushing.

Voters are asked to choose a president every four years. Surely, the commissioner can choose the A’s or the Giants after three years. Selig hasn’t made a decision because he doesn’t want to make a decision. He wants the A’s and the Giants to work it out between them so he doesn’t have to decide and alienate one of them.

The teams, however, can’t reach an agreement if they don’t talk to each other, and for a long time now the Giants haven’t returned the A’s calls. It’s an arrogance that should be enough for the commissioner to show the A’s the way to San Jose and tell the Giants “you blew your opportunity to keep that area in your territory.”

Commissioners often talk about and make decisions based on the best interests of baseball. Allowing the A’s to move to San Jose would clearly be in the best interests of baseball. The team is dying in Oakland.

Last season the Athletics had the smallest attendance in the majors, failing to reach 1.5 million. The Giants, third in the majors, drew more than twice that many fans. In 2007, the Giants finished last in their division and drew 3.2 million. The Athletics have the most meager revenue in the majors; the Giants rank fifth.

Would taking San Jose and its entire county, Santa Clara, from the Giants undermine those numbers? That’s what the Giants claim, but it’s an empty argument. The Giants don’t talk about the additional fans and revenue they would inherit from the Athletics’ absence in the Bay area.

I don’t know what the commissioner’s three-man committee has found about the Oakland effect on the Giants in its three-year study, but I would guess the loss of Santa Clara County would be offset by the gain of Oakland.

But then, that’s probably something the committee is still studying and accounts for the continued delay in the commissioner’s decision. At the owners’ meeting last month Selig said he was close to making a decision.

Years ago a writer friend wrote that the Yankees were on the verge of making a particular trade. As it turned out, they didn’t make it for many months. Ah ha, my friend proclaimed, defending his report, they have created a new definition of “on the verge.”

The commissioner has created a new definition of “close.”

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News Item: Athletics sign Manny

Manny who? Oh, that Manny.

There is, course only one Manny. Sure, we had Manny Sanguillen, Manny Trillo, Manny Mota, Manny Alexander, Manny Sarmiento, Manny Acosta, Manny Aybar and the manager Manny Acta. But if you say Manny, no one will think you mean anyone but that Manny.

Ramirez is back, or will be back once he serves a 50-game suspension, and the Athletics have him. Why would they want him? People have asked that question. But I ask another one. Why not?

Ramirez comes to the A’s cost effective. His gross salary is $500,000, but subtracting the pay from his 50-game suspension he winds up with a net of about $345,000. Even the cash-strapped A’s can afford that.

If Ramirez shows he can still hit productively, he will be worth the gamble. If he can no longer hit, it will be no loss because there are plenty of aging players who can no longer hit. Ramirez would just be one more at little cost.

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News Item:  War of Twits Erupts

Somehow I can’t see Red Smith demeaning himself by engaging in a childish Internet spat the way Richard Sandomir did recently. Smith, in my opinion, was the best sports columnist who ever put pen or typewriter key to paper. Sandomir is a mediocre, at best, television and sports business writer for The New York Times, the newspaper with which Smith finished his career.

As reported by awfulannouncing.com, Sandomir last week engaged in a debate of twits – maybe that should be a Twitter debate—with Darren Rovell of CNBC about a report of an agreement between MSG and Time Warner. This is what passes for news – and exclusive news at that – in the world of television sports reporting.

Sandomir and Rovell spent more time than anyone could care tweeting at each other about the report, which Sandomir apparently had first.

These were some of the tweets as reported by awfulannouncing.com

Rovell: “Confirmed @RichSandomir’s report on MSG-TWC deal.”

Sandomir: “@darrenrovell Gee, thanks! You confirmed a solid story that didn’t need your confirming. You’re so keen.”

Rovell: “@RichSandomir how much credit are u looking for? I was driving in my car and Francesa didn’t have the courtesy to credit u.”

Sandomir: “@darrenrovell When you say ‘confirmed,’ it sounds as if it’s not official until you say it. Can’t you just RT?”

Rovell: “Thats what I have to do if I don’t report it.”

Sandomir: “@darrenrovell I don’t want ur credit if it means you ‘confirmed’ it; that’s gauche; means my work needs your imprimatur.It doesn’t.”

Rovell: “Noted. Wont credit you anytime you report something before me.”

This silliness has nothing to do with baseball, but I mention it because the Times’ twit is the reporter who last July created his own – fictional – version of baseball history, crediting Curt Flood’s lawsuit and Catfish Hunter’s breach-of-contract grievance for the creation of free agency. That’s the sort of things twits do.