With the season over, Commissioner Bud Selig has no more ballpark visits to make on his grand tour as he prepares to retire after 22 years in office. Selig visited every park to make sure reporters and fans remembered him and all the good work he has done during his unusually lengthy tenure.

Selig is proud of his legacy, as he should be for the most part, and his legacy is important to him. But how about these developments for the final peg in his legacy:

• As his final public act before he retires Jan. 25, Selig has presided over what would have been a disaster had it not been for Madison Bumgarner and Game 7.

• Despite Bumgarner’s awesome efforts, this World Series was still the third least watched World Series in the 41-year history of ratings for televised World Series.

• It was the least watched series of the 13 seven-game series covered by the ratings.

• The Series got off to a poor start when the opener was the least watched Game 1 ever, and Games 3 and 4 were watched by even fewer viewers.

I am not talking about TV ratings, those numbers you always hear about that few people understand but everyone accepts because if you don’t know what they mean, you can’t argue with them.

Even “viewership” numbers, which seem straightforward, aren’t. In two different places in its Thursday news release on ratings for Game 7 and the Series, Fox cited two different viewership totals, 23.5 million and 52 million. Big difference, no? I asked for an explanation from Lou D’Ermilio, Fox’s senior vice president of communications.

He replied in an e-mail, “23.5 million is average viewership in any given minute. 52 million is persons age 2+ who watch all or part of the game.”

Other than learning that my 2-year-old grandson Ryan could participate in the Nielsen system if I could hook him up with a guy from Nielsen, I’m not sure I learned much about the system.

But I am more interested in the number of viewers who watched the Series on television because they are more relevant to the commissioner’s legacy than Fox’s Nielsen’s ratings system.

As I said, this was the third least watched World Series in the 41 years that viewer numbers have been tracked. Only the 2008 (13,635,000) and 2012 (12.7 million) World Series attracted fewer viewers.

This one was headed to No. 1 on the least-watched list until the Giants and the Royals produced a going-away gift for the retiring commissioner: Game 7.

With three of the first four games having drawn so few viewers, an infrequent Game 7 was urgently needed to rescue this World Series from a destined oblivion. And it turned out to be a special Game 7 because of Bumgarner.

The World Series is baseball’s premier event. Once upon a time, it captured the attention of practically the entire country. As the years went by, however, people found other pastimes more to their liking. The baseball following dwindled.

Let’s take a closer look at the attraction the World Series has become. Before 2005, only two World Series of 41 monitored drew viewerships under 20 million, both during Selig’s tenure. This year’s Series marked the 10^th consecutive, beginning in 2005, that drew fewer than 20 million viewers.

That relatively meager total was virtually unheard of before Selig became commissioner. It didn’t even happen in the Earthquake World Series in 1989, when the four games averaged 24.55 million viewers. Fay Vincent was the commissioner that year, but in Vincent’s next two – and last two years – viewership rebounded to 30.2 million and 35.7 million.

Selig, who has always been critical of Vincent as commissioner and was an aggressive leader in the 1992 move to oust him, first presided over the World Series in 1992 as interim commissioner, and viewership was maintained at 30 million. In the next 21 World Series under Selig, that number was not seen again. In the last 10 years, the number 20 million has not been seen.

Am I suggesting that Selig killed the World Series, that the decline in interest is Selig’s responsibility? No, but he has taken credit for everything positive that has happened in the past two decades so if the shoe fits…. It’s difficult to separate the good from the bad, the successful from the unsuccessful. If the man was responsible for the good things that have happened, maybe he has to accept blame for the bad things that have happened, and the decline in interest in the World Series is bad for baseball.

How bad is it? Regular-season National Football League games have drawn higher ratings than World Series games. National Basketball Association finals have drawn higher Nielsen ratings the last five years and six of the last seven.

Is Selig paying attention? Does he think this is a passing fancy? He has had a committee working on his Athletics-to-San Jose problem for what must be an eternity already. He has a second committee working on pace of game. Is he saying, “Hey, I’m outta here in three months. Then it’s Rob Manfred’s problem.”

But Manfred, the incoming commissioner, can’t possibly be as creative as the man who linked the All-Star game to the World Series, you know, the link where the team from the league that wins the July exhibition game gets homefield advantage in the World Series.

Selig said it would make the All-Star came more attractive to viewers, and that, in turn, would help Fox’s ratings. Despite Selig’s myopic view, neither has happened.

Selig has not been heard to explain the decline in World Series viewership. I’ll throw out one possibility for discussion and speculation.

Selig takes great pride in initiating interleague play, and since he saw that from his viewpoint it was good, he felt it would be even better to have more.

Thus, when Jim Crane purchased the Houston Astros in November 2011, Selig approved the sale on the condition that Crane agree to move the team to the American League, creating the two 15-team leagues and making virtual daily inter-league play necessary.

One of the attractions of the World Series, at least when I was a young fan, was it meant that two teams that never played each other during the season, would meet in October. There was always mystery in those matchups. No mystery remains.

This year alone the Royals and the Giants played a three-game series in August. And if the Dodgers or the Cardinals had been the National League representative, they, too, had played the Royals during the season. The Giants also played two other American League playoff teams, the Tigers and the Athletics.

If I wanted to spend more time on the subject, I could probably come up with a couple of other possibilities. But Selig has been making at least $25 million a year, and he could spend the next three months figuring out if he has infused the World Series a fatal dose of something and whether he can now develop an antidote.

The New York Yankees are not in this World Series, but a bunch of their alumni are. They are executives, coaches and scouts, and they have done for the San Francisco Giants what their equivalent Yankees’ contingent hasn’t been able to do since 2009.

And to make the picture even bleaker for the Yankees, Brian Sabean’s squad of former Yankees has won the World Series twice and has the Giants in their third since Brian Cashman’s crew last played in and last won the World Series.

The Giants’ band of former Yankees includes the team’s top two baseball executives, four of Bruce Bochy’s seven-man coaching staff and a relatively large assortment of scouting, player development and minor league personnel.

Brian Sabean, who has been the Giants’ general manager for 18 years, is the most important member of the Yankees’ expatriates. He is the architect of the Giants’ World Series champions, and he has recruited and hired the other Yankees’ expatriates.

“You make those contacts and develop relationships over time,” Sabean said by telephone from Kansas City before Game 2 of the World Series.

“That’s not unusual. People in baseball go back to their roots a lot of the time.”

Sabean’s roots in New York began when he went to work for the Yankees in 1984 after having been the head baseball coach at the University of Tampa. He spent eight years with the Yankees, primarily in scouting and player development.

It was during Sabean’s tenure that the Yankees signed and/or drafted Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Derek Jeter.

Sabean moved to the Giants in 1993, and the Yankees’ minor league system hasn’t recovered from the loss.

His departure had other ramifications as well. For one thing, Dick Tidrow followed.

Tidrow pitched for the Yankees. He pitched for them for five years and left under unusual circumstances. The season was 1979, and it was only 11 games old when Rich (Goose) Gossage and Cliff Johnson engaged in a post-game brawl in the Yankees’ clubhouse.

Gossage emerged from it with a torn ligament in his right thumb, and Tidrow, previously his setup man, replaced him as the closer. Tidrow had pitched effectively in the setup role, but he couldn’t duplicate his performance as closer.

After two particularly rough outings in which Tidrow gave up 9 runs and 14 hits in 4 1/3 innings, George Steinbrenner, the unhappy owner, ordered general manager Al Rosen to get rid of Tidrow. Rosen dutifully traded Tidrow to the Chicago Cubs.

The pitcher, however, returned to the Yankees in 1985 as a special assignment scout, working under Sabean.

“He’s a great boss to work for,” said Tidrow, who lives in the Kansas City area, about a dozen miles from Kauffman Stadium. “One time I offered to move there but he said with what you’re doing you might as well stay where you are.”

In his job with the Giants, Tidrow has always traveled a lot. He and Sabean have had similar starts to their current careers.

“Doug Melvin hired Tidrow,” Sabean said, referring to the Milwaukee general manager, who was the Yankees’ scouting director at the time. “Doug hired me. I left in ’93. Then Dick came over shortly after that.”

Tidrow is the Giants’ vice president and assistant general manager for player personnel, a Giants’ employee for 21 years who has contributed to seven post-season appearances.

“I guess it starts with bringing over Brian Sabean,” Tidrow said of the Yankees’ connection. “I came after Brian and we started acquiring guys we trusted.”

Dave Righetti is the longest serving uniformed member of the Yankees’ expatriates. A pitcher with the Yankees for 11 years, 4 as a starter, 7 as a closer, Righetti has been San Francisco’s pitching coach for 15 years.

Righetti, who pitched a no-hitter for the Yankees against Boston July 4, 1983, was not an original member of the Yankees. They acquired him from Texas in November 1978 in a 10-player that also sent Sparky Lyle to the Rangers.

Although it would have happened early the next season anyway, the Righetti deal broke up the culinary efforts of Lyle and Tidrow, who Tidrow said made hamburgers and hot dogs in the clubhouse.

Roberto Kelly has been the Giants’ first base coach for seven seasons. Signed by the Yankees as an undrafted free agent in 1982, he was an outfielder for the Yankees for six seasons.

His tenure ended when the Yankees traded him to Cincinnati in November 1992 for Paul O’Neill, who went on to play an integral role in four Yankees’ World Series titles.

Hensley Meulens and Joe Lefebvre were both Yankees outfielders and are now Giants’ hitting coaches.

Meulens, who signed with the Yankees as an undrafted free agent in 1985, played a total of 159 games for them over 5 seasons. He has been a Giants’ coach for 5 years.

The Yankees selected Lefebvre in the third round of the 1977 draft. He played only one season for them, 1980, before they included him in a six-player trade with San Diego in which the Yankees acquired Jerry Mumphrey.

Lefebvre has served with the Giants for nine years.

Off the field, the Giants employ even more former Yankees. Try these examples: J.T. Snow, Shane Turner, Fred Stanley, Henry Cotto, Steve Balboni, Felipe Alou.

The last named, who is a special assistant to Sabean, is more legitimately a Giants’ legend, having played for them their first 6 seasons in San Francisco and managing them for 4 years.

But Alou played for the Yankees for three seasons (1971-73), leaving when Montreal claimed him on waivers.

Turner is the director of player development. A sixth-round draft choice in 1985, he was traded to Philadelphia in 1987 for Mike Easler and never played for the Yankees.

Snow was drafted in the fifth round in 1989 and played 7 games and batted 6 times as a rookie in 1992, then was traded after that season to the Angels for Jim Abbott. Snow is a special assistant in the Giants’ player development department.

Stanley is also a special assistant in player development, but he had a more active career with the Yankees, playing eight years (1973-80), primarily as a shortstop.

The Yankees obtained him from San Diego in 1972 and traded him to Oakland in 1980.

Cotto is the coordinator for outfield and baserunning instruction, played for the Yankees for three seasons (1985-87) between trades with the Cubs and the Mariners.

Balboni, a highly popular player with the Yankees for five years in two different stays, is an advance major league scout for the Giants.

The Giants are in their third World Series in five years, seeking their third World Series triumph in five years. The Yankees, meanwhile, are non- participants for the fifth time in five years.

After the Kansas City Royals completed their stunning sweep of the Baltimore Orioles for the American League pennant, Jackie Autry, the league’s honorary president, presented the title trophy to the Royals’ owner, David Glass.

As I watched this improbable scene, I thought of how undeserving Glass was of any kind of trophy. But then I talked with Glass on the telephone and when I hung up I had two good reasons for giving him credit for the Royals’ presence in the World Series.

If Dayton Moore is the major league executive of the year, which he should be for building the Royals into a World Series participant, Glass should be owner of the year for hiring Moore in the first place and then letting him do his job for more than eight years without telling him what to do, a temptation many owners can’t resist.

“He said it would take seven to nine years,” the 79-year-old owner said. “We stayed the course and didn’t deviate from it.”

It took the Royals 29 years to get back to the World Series – back to the post-season – and Glass was the chief reason it took so long. For the first 7 of those years, he was the Royals’ board chairman following the death of Ewing Kaufmann, the team’s founding owner, and for the last 14 years he has been the team’s owner.

Glass was suspected of manipulating the sale of the team in his favor. He got the Royals for $96 million despite an offer of $120 million from a New York lawyer, Miles Prentice, who owned minor league teams and was making offers for any major league team that was on the market. Major League Baseball was concerned that he didn’t have enough assets to sustain sizeable losses and awarded the Royals to Glass.

“After we first bought the team we didn’t have a good feel for what we should do,” Glass said in our conversation. “It’s one thing to do whatever it takes to execute a plan, but you need the plan. We didn’t have a plan until Dayton came.”

Herk Robinson, one of the nicest guys who has ever worked in a baseball front office, was the Royals’ general manager when Glass took over. When Glass bought the team in 2000, he named Allard Baird general manager but fired him in May 2006.

What to do then?

“I called the baseball lifers I knew,” Glass said, “and Dayton was the only one they mentioned.”

At the time, Moore was Atlanta’s assistant general manager, slated to succeed John Schuerholz as the Braves’ general manager. The Royals, however, plucked Moore off the g.m.-in-waiting vine first.

Under Glass, the Royals have not been big spenders. In fact, Glass was accused early on of imposing the same kind of regressive pecuniary practices that his critics said he employed as president and chief operating officer of Wal-Mart Stores. The difference was Wal-Mart didn’t play baseball and didn’t need hitters and pitchers.

In his second and third years as board chairman, Glass slashed the payroll from $41 million, fifth highest in the majors, to $30 million and then to $18 million, 27^th of 28 and only $3 million more than Montreal’s 28^th-ranked payroll.

As owner, Glass demonstrated no greater willingness to spend money on players. Fans had become accustomed to the munificent spending of Kauffman, who became wealthy from his pharmaceutical business and eagerly used his wealth to bring his city a championship team.

Glass had no such attachment and no such goal. His payrolls as owner continued to be among the smallest, and the Royals’ won-lost records reflected it.

“Someone like Ewing Kauffman stands alone,” Glass said. “You can’t copy them or emulate them.”

Glass could be called the anti-Kauffman. In the five-year period 2002-06, the Royals lost 100 or more games three successive times and four seasons over-all. They finished last those last three years plus the next season for four in a row. In all, they finished last seven times in 12 seasons (1996-2007).

The payrolls stayed consistently low, remaining in the bottom third until 2009 when Glass, with Moore’s input, paid his players $82 million, placing the Royals 18^th in the payroll rankings. With this year’s season-opening $92 million payroll, the Royals hit an all-time high, though it was only No. 19.

“When Dayton Moore came on board it was a commitment to scouting and player development,” said Dan Glass,” 15-year team president and David’s son, speaking of the team’s fiscal strategy. “We couldn’t compete for big-money players in the majors. The best thing to do was develop players, then supplement them with players from the free-agent market. I think we felt we were doing it before, but it doesn’t always work out that way.”

I asked David Glass if he expected the payroll to grow in the near future. “I have no idea,” he said. “I’m totally dependent on Dan and Dayton in what to do. They keep me in the loop.”

Dan and Dayton weren’t around when David Glass made his initial impact on Major League Baseball. It came late in 1994 after the start of the players’ strike over the owners’ demand for a payroll cap.

Glass was a labor hawk and joined Bud Selig and Jerry Reinsdorf, among others, in waging war with the players over the cap issue. That was the strike that led to the cancellation of the World Series for the first time.

With the season gone and the World Series in jeopardy, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service summoned the two sides to a major meeting. Several owners and players attended.

Glass made his case for a cap, which players fiercely opposed, and some of the players challenged him. Ruffled, Glass never attended another meeting.

As the losing seasons mounted – 17 in 18 years – the once passionate fans became apathetic and the days of George Brett, Frank White and Willie Wilson became a distant memory.

Two World Series, one World Series championship, four other league championship series – all in a 10-year window.

Is the window opening again? Is this the start of recapturing and recreating those years? Is this the start of renewed financial initiatives?

On the matter of payroll, Dan Glass said, “As our revenues grow, we can increase the payroll.” But he added, “Payroll isn’t everything.”

David Glass opted not to discuss those issues.

“I’m focused on this year,” he said. “I’ve been a baseball junkie forever. This is the highlight of what I love.”

PAYROLLS TO PICK WINNERS BY

If you feel you have to place a bet on the World Series, you can call your local bookie and get his odds or just take a look at this.

In the past 11 World Series, the team with the higher payroll won 8 times. In two of the three instances where the higher-payroll team lost, the payroll difference was nearly negligible.

In 2012 the Tigers ($140.7 million) lost to the Giants ($138.1 million). In 2005 the Astros ($76.3 million) lost to the White Sox ($75 million). The one where the payroll difference was sizeable was 2003 when the $150.5 million Yankees lost to the $48.4 million Marlins.

This year’s World Series matches the $154 million Giants and the $92 million Royals.

Not that I am an expert on sports betting – I don’t do it and I am against it – I get e-mail from an offshore sports book called Bovadar. That’s why I know the Royals are slight favorites to win the Series.

I doubt that sports books include team payrolls in their odds computations, but payrolls can play a role in a Series outcome. Have they played a role in this year’s playoffs?

In the American League the team with the higher payroll has won only one of four matchups (Royals over Athletics). The National League has been the opposite. A team with the higher payroll (the Giants) has won three matchups (Pirates, Nationals, Cardinals) while the lower-payroll Cardinals defeated the Dodgers.

BELATED JOLTS FROM 25-YEAR-OLD EARTHQUAKE

How could it already be 25 years since the San Francisco World Series earthquake nearly sent me flying from the press box at Candlestick Park into the seats below?

But it is, and the 25^th anniversary was Friday. I did very little to note the anniversary. In fact, I did only one thing. I called Fay Vincent.

He had been the baseball commissioner for only a matter of weeks when the earthquake interrupted the Bay Area World Series between San Francisco and Oakland, and he instantly became embroiled in a perilous situation.

I’m not referring to his health and well-being; he escaped unscathed physically. But the club owners and umpires gave him a hard time.

As Vincent related over the telephone from Florida, Richie Phillips, the umpires’ lawyer, came to him and said, “I have to file a grievance. You didn’t consult us before postponing the game.”

Phillips, Vincent said, told him he didn’t want to file the grievance, but “they’re giving me a hard time. I don’t want to file it but I have to.”

“The umpires thought it was insulting that I didn’t talk to them. I didn’t want to talk to Don Fehr either.” Fehr, the players’ union leader, didn’t file a grievance, and nothing came of the umpires’ foolish action.

Referring to the umpires’ action, Vincent added, “It was my first experience knowing what a hellhole I was in.”

It was not his last, not even from that event.

“I was on the Today show the next morning, and I wore a jacket but not a tie,” Vincent recalled. “George Steinbrenner called me and said, ‘You looked like a bum. That was disgraceful.” I said, ‘George, this is a war zone. Where are you?’ He said in Tampa.”

One of my vivid images from that episode was seeing Vincent at a news conference without a tie or a jacket. A basically informal person myself, I thought that any official in Vincent’s position who was not afraid of being seen in public sans tie and jacket had to have a lot of confidence in himself.

The story used to be told that a neighbor would see one of Vincent’s predecessors, Bowie Kuhn, working in the garden at his home in Ridgewood, N.J., wearing a dress shirt and a tie.

As for Steinbrenner, it would be less than six months later that the New York Yankees’ owner would see Vincent in tie and jacket banishing him from baseball for consorting with a two-bit gambler to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield.