Commissioners of professional sports leagues generally make decisions and stick to them. They don’t acknowledge making mistakes, and they don’t change their decisions. It’s not that Bud Selig made a mistake with one of his hires, but Joe Torre, the man he hired nearly a year ago for the highest-ranking baseball position in his office, has unexpectedly given the commissioner a chance to get it right.

Torre resigned Wednesday as executive vice president for baseball operations. He had to resign because he has joined one of the groups that want to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team Torre recently managed for three years.

What is the second chance that Torre’s resignation gives Selig to get it right? I am not talking here about the sale of the Dodgers. I am talking about the position from which Torre resigned.

When Selig hired Torre for it a year ago, he violated his own rule, ignoring minority candidates for the job as executive vice president for baseball operations. The commissioner already had a senior vice president for baseball operations, but the black man who held that position, Frank Robinson, wasn’t even interviewed.

In a 1999 letter to the clubs outlining his new guidelines on minority interviews, Selig wrote that he and his aides will ”aggressively recruit and hire diverse candidates for all open central office positions.” In practice, though, it became “do as I say, not as I do.”

After Torre was given his job a year ago, three senior vice presidents for baseball operations were named – one white male, one woman and one black male – and senior officials boasted about the diversity of the hirings.

In Wednesday’s announcement, the commissioner’s office said the three – Joe Garagiola Jr., Kim Ng and Peter Woodfork – would run baseball operations on an interim basis. “A permanent replacement will be named at a later date,” the news release said.

It did not promise to provide a scorecard of those interviewed to be Torre’s successor, but this time the commissioner would be wise to follow his own rule.

Torre, 71 years old, has done just about everything a man can do in baseball: player, manager, broadcaster. Owner would make for an attractive last line to his resume.

Before he can add that appellation, though, Torre’s group has to wade through a half dozen or more competitors. Torre’s addition to the group headed by Rick Caruso, a southern California developer of shopping malls, enhances that group’s chances of getting the Dodgers, the financial bids being relatively equal (very likely more than $1 billion).

Selig has known and liked Torre for more than 50 years, since his brother Frank played in Milwaukee, where Selig lived and would become the principal owner of the city’s major league Brewers.

“People Selig likes and has had positive experiences with are the people he wants to see buy teams,” I wrote in a column last week, “and his view carries more weight than anyone else’s – and anyone else’s offer.”

I used that reasoning to decide that the Stan Kasten group should be considered the leading contender for the Dodgers, even though the seller, Frank McCourt, has the right under his agreement with Major League Baseball to choose the buyer.

As president first of the Atlanta Braves and then the Washington Nationals, Kasten has long been a friend and ally of Selig, who would view him as the perfect partner with a team as prominent as the Dodgers.

Now that Torre has jumped into the competition, however, he could conceivably neutralize the advantage Kasten gives the group headed by Mark Walter, chief executive officer of Guggenheim Partners, a global financial services company.

But the Walter group still has two advantages:

• Kasten has vast experience running organizations while Torre’s experience has been on field. If Torre and his group were to buy the Dodgers, he would presumably have a front-office position.

• As a well-known, widely popular Los Angelino, Magic Johnson, a Kasten recruit, would be a welcome African-American addition to Major League Baseball.

It is premature, of course, to be talking about leading candidates when we don’t even know for sure who all of the candidates are. Initial bids don’t have to be submitted until Jan. 23. And as for the “Bud’s best buddy” barometer of picking a winning bidder, one person who is closely following the sale process said, “Every final group will have a friend of Bud.”

Under normal circumstances it would not be surprising for a group to wind up with two or more of the commissioner’s friends. That’s what happened in 2001 when John Henry, Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino merged their interests and bought the Boston Red Sox.

In this sale, however, the investment banker conducting it, the Blackstone Group, has established the ground rule that competing groups cannot talk to each other. It’s possible that two or more groups could communicate with each other with Blackstone’s permission, but a Blackstone representative did not return a call to comment on that possibility.

“Frank wants as vigorous bidding as possible,” the person following the sale said of McCourt. “His interest is in keeping deep-pocket people away from each other.”

Obviously, McCourt, who is deeply in debt and must pay his ex-wife Jamie $131 million by April 30 under terms of their divorce agreement, wants to get as many millions as possible for the Dodgers. He can best achieve that goal by preserving a bidding war among the groups and not having the number of groups reduced through mergers.

Meanwhile, Torre’s new partner welcomes the former manager to his group.

“The Dodgers are an iconic franchise, and I am thrilled to partner with Joe Torre, one of baseball’s all-time greats, to launch a bid for this storied organization,” Caruso said in a statement. “Joe has a proven track record of fielding winning teams, and I am looking forward to our group benefiting from his unique experience.”

If Caruso hasn’t done his homework, though, he might want to check Torre’s “track record of fielding winning teams.” All managers should be as lucky as Torre was when the Yankees hired him in 1996.

Torre had managed in all or parts of 14 seasons with the Mets, the Braves and the Cardinals and had 5 winning records and 9 losing records, finishing in first place only once, with Atlanta in 1982.

The Cardinals fired him only 47 games into the 1995 season, and when the Yankees needed a manager for the 1996 season, Torre was the suggestion of Arthur Richman, an aide to George Steinbrenner who knew Torre from their years with the Mets.

It was only then that Torre, with Steinbrenner’s bloated payrolls, became a winning and championship manager. In Torre’s dozen seasons as their manager, the Yankees had payrolls totaling $1.55 billion.

Torre’s 2005 team was the first in baseball history with a $200 million payroll, and 11 of Torre’s 12 teams had the majors’ highest payrolls. The 2001 Yankees had only the third highest payroll but less than $1 million behind the Dodgers and the Red Sox and with those teams had the first $100 million payrolls.

When Torre was in Atlanta managing the Braves (1982-84), Kasten was general manager of the N.B.A. Hawks. They became good friends when their teams held board meetings together, both being owned by Ted Turner.

When they have been together in more recent years, Torre has taken to referring to Kasten jokingly as the man who fired him in Atlanta. It’s not true, but Kasten jokes in return. “I can’t take credit for that,” he says.