MLB to form committee to find commissioner Bud Selig’s successor

Bud Selig has been Major League Baseball's commissioner since September 1992.  (Brad Mangin/Getty Images)

Major League Baseball will form a seven-member committee to find a replacement for commissioner Bud Selig when he retires next year, MLB announced Thursday.

Selig turns 80 in July and said he that plans on retiring in January when his contract expires.

Selig took office as commissioner in September 1992, and since that time baseball has grown from a $1.2 billion industry to an entity earning more than $8 billion a year in revenues. There have also been 22 new stadiums built around the league, and the sport is enjoying almost two decades of labor peace. 

The committee will be headed by St. Louis Cardinals principal owner and chief executive officer William O. DeWitt, Jr.  The other members are Colorado Rockies owner, chairman and CEO Dick Monfort; Philadelphia Phillies general partner, president and CEO David Montgomery; Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno; Pittsburgh Pirates chairman Bob Nutting; Minnesota Twins CEO Jim Pohlad; and Chicago White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf.

“Look, I’ve told everybody that I’ve got another 16, 17 months to go and I’ve got obviously lots of things I want to do and will do,” Selig said to SI.com last September. “But I am convinced — I think it’s Jan. 24, 2015 that is the actual date — that I will be done. I believe that and I think everybody now understands that I will be done."

The longtime commissioner officially announced that he would retire in 2015 this past September.

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