A pair of former baseball executives were elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday when Bud Selig and John Schuerholz were voted in by the Today’s Game Era Committee at baseball’s winter meetings in Maryland.
A total of 12 votes were needed from the 16-member committee, the newer version of the veterans’ committee, which provides a chance to honor contributors to the game and takes extra looks at players who didn’t get voted in on the BBWAA ballot.
This group of 10 considered for induction to Cooperstown all made their primary contributions to baseball in the period of 1988-present. The ballot also included players Mark McGwire, Albert Belle, Orel Hershiser, Harold Baines, and Will Clark, plus managers Davey Johnson and Lou Piniella, and owner George Steinbrenner.
Selig, the former owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, served as MLB commissioner from 1992-2015. Under his watch, baseball expanded from 26 to 30 teams, added the Wild Card to the postseason, and saw the birth of interleague play. He was also at the helm at the worst labor stoppage in MLB history in 1994-95, which included the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.
Schuerholz was a longtime general manager who won a World Series with the Kansas City Royals in 1985, then moved to the Atlanta Braves in 1991, where he led a front office that captured 14 division titles from 1991-2005, with only the strike-shortened 1994 season snapping their streak.
The pair will be inducted into Cooperstown on July 30, 2017, in what could be a busy day. The players elected by the BBWAA, which could include Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Trevor Hoffman, Ivan Rodriguez, and Vladimir Guerrero, will be announced on Jan. 18.
