NEW YORK — The passage of time is an unavoidable dialog today for Rob Manfred, the 66-year-old commissioner of Main League Baseball. Sitting in a convention room at his Manhattan workplace this month, he scurried out mid-sentence to retrieve a bit of paper, a small sq. with dominated interlocking traces and a dot within the center known as an Amsler grid.
“So, whenever you’re older,” he mentioned on his return, “your eye physician will in all probability provide you with one among these.”
In August, sensing a difficulty along with his proper eye, Manfred seemed on the grid and noticed solely black on one aspect. The subsequent day he was in surgical procedure to restore a indifferent retina. His physician advised him he was fortunate: Twenty years in the past, he might need completely misplaced sight within the eye.
Manfred talks concerning the ordeal now principally as an inconvenience. For weeks, he needed to spend a lot of his days mendacity down. It’s not an optimum place to run a league that final 12 months reached report revenues of $12.1 billion. The restoration additionally got here with a health care provider’s orders to not fly, which very almost saved Manfred from one of many sport’s holiest days, the primary recreation of the World Sequence. However imaginative and prescient in his eye has a lot improved since his surgical procedure, and the league he oversees is at its healthiest level throughout a tenure that he says will finish 4 years from now.
Saturday marked 10 years on the job for Manfred. He’s the fifth of the game’s 10 commissioners to achieve that time.
Manfred has been commissioner for a decade. (Rob Tringali / MLB by way of Getty Photos)
Manfred’s first eight years on the job have been stuffed with quarrels: with gamers and their union, with minor league homeowners and cities, with reporters. When talking publicly, and notably when defending his choices, he used to react aggressively, a vestige of his days as a labor lawyer. However as he enters his second decade in workplace, one thing sudden has occurred. For a 12 months and a half now, he has been visibly calmer. He says time and expertise have one thing to do with this, sure. And a few media coaching, too. However success has additionally performed a job. The commissioner has grown extra comfy as he’s began to see the fruits of his signature achievement: the pitch clock.
The clock had as soon as been unthinkable in baseball. However because the measure was launched two years in the past, it has compelled pitchers to work quicker, dashing up video games that had grown to be a drag. Sometime, Manfred may even be remembered as “the pitch-clock commissioner.” It simply may have been an unflattering epithet, besides attendance has grown in consecutive seasons for the primary time in additional than a decade.
“I had come to the conclusion in my very own thoughts that no matter change you make, there’s going to be individuals who name it heresy, so you may’t make choices based mostly on that,” Manfred mentioned. “What we actually did want was one thing that was agency and prescriptive and had sturdiness. And the clock appeared like the one factor I may provide you with.”
Manfred won’t ever go down as the preferred of the game’s leaders. However no matter approval scores, he has been a relentless agent of change, with a physique of labor that now raises a completely totally different query: Within the historical past of the game, may Manfred be its most consequential commissioner?
“I don’t assume it’s hyperbole,” mentioned Steve Greenberg of Allen & Firm, the son of Corridor of Famer Hank Greenberg, and a buddy and advisor to Manfred. “It’s greater than the pitch clock. It’s all of these rule modifications, the notion that the sport has form of been reinvigorated, the give attention to larger, broader, nationwide and worldwide sponsorship and media relationships, and simply the altering nature of media.”
“The diploma of issue of this job has elevated exponentially within the final 30 years from what it was.”
The commissioner’s fingerprints are all around the fashionable recreation. He introduced the designated hitter to the Nationwide League and he put a runner on base in further innings. The bodily bases are bigger. He has reshaped the enterprise of baseball as effectively, most notably within the minor leagues. In 2021, Manfred threw 40 farm groups out of the standard affiliate system, an overhaul he powered by way of whereas followers and politicians screamed he was harming the sport’s long-term future, and even small-town America itself.
However it’s uncommon that followers care extra about an initiative away from the sector than on it, leaving the clock to loom uniquely massive. In magnitude, its arrival is usually in contrast with the 1973 introduction of the designated hitter within the American League, although one knowledgeable prefers a comparability to the introduction of the foul strike on the flip of the twentieth century.
“The pitch clock returned the sport to its historical roots and rhythms,” mentioned John Thorn, who in his position because the league’s official historian works for Manfred. “Ordinarily, the doorway of the machine spells the top of artwork, however on this case it restored baseball from a flabby parody of the outdated recreation to one thing that, surprisingly, resembled it.”
The common time of recreation in the course of the clock’s first 12 months in 2023 dropped by 24 minutes from the 12 months earlier than, to 2 hours, 40 minutes. When 4 extra minutes fell off this previous 12 months, baseball had its quickest season in 40 years.
Manfred nonetheless has loads of issues to work by way of within the sport. He didn’t present a agency opinion on his place in historical past. However to some, like Atlanta Braves chairman Terry McGuirk, the comparability isn’t notably shut as a result of Manfred tackled a much more advanced job than even his speedy predecessor, Bud Selig, whose accomplishments as commissioner embrace the introduction of income sharing and the event of expertise pioneer MLB.com.
“Bud did a terrific job,” mentioned McGuirk, who like Greenberg is a buddy to Manfred. “I don’t assume it’s even shut with what you’re attempting to run right here. That is an amazingly difficult machine, modern-day baseball, in comparison with what it was within the 90s.”
Selig served as MLB commissioner from July 1998-January 2015. (Susan Farley / AFP by way of Getty Photos)
Selig is 90 and educating on the College of Wisconsin. He was commissioner for 22 years, with Manfred serving him as a loyal lieutenant throughout that tenure. Considered one of Selig’s powers was corralling a bunch of homeowners who most well-liked to disagree with each other. But, nothing he did on the sector was fairly as profound because the clock, which Manfred and others imagine is an important endeavor of his profession.
“Once I took over — with Rob, by the best way — there hadn’t been change in 50 years, proper?” Selig mentioned. “There’s all the time a good quantity of controversy surrounding each commissioner. However how do I believe he’s finished? Look, I’m partial. He labored with me and for me for 25, nearly 30 years. I believe he’s finished fantastic.
“It was very troublesome once I took over in ‘92, very troublesome. The game hadn’t modified something, it had a horrible relationship with the union. It was actually a era or two behind the place it ought to have been. However Rob right now, the job could be very difficult and really troublesome.
“Is it extra so than the early ‘90s? Properly, I suppose what I’d say to you, I’ll let historians decide that.”
For an government who has affected a lot change, Manfred wound up working baseball nearly by chance. His ambition was to not develop into a CEO, nor did he got down to work in sports activities. Twice as a younger lawyer, in truth, Manfred turned down a full-time job with baseball. He thought he would develop into a accomplice at a legislation agency and trip off.
The explanations Manfred began down this path are rooted within the small upstate metropolis of Rome, N.Y.
Labor relations, the push and pull of unions and administration teams, was a part of the material of life in Rome, a manufacturing unit city as soon as often known as the “Copper Metropolis.” And at the same time as a child, he liked a superb debate. Manfred mentioned he doesn’t have a single reminiscence of his mother and father arguing, however effectively earlier than he went on to Harvard Legislation, “I used to be an argumentative baby,” he laughed. “There is no such thing as a doubt about it.”
Manfred’s father ran a unionized manufacturing facility, Revere Copper and Brass, that “had horrible labor relations.” His mom noticed issues from the opposite aspect as a part of a trainer’s union that had its share of labor stoppages.
All three schools Manfred utilized to had labor applications. He picked a Washington, D.C. legislation agency that specialised within the area, Morgan, Lewis and Bockius. MLB occurred to be a shopper. So Manfred began doing work as exterior counsel in 1988. He was assigned to the duty by a person who’d develop into a father determine, Chuck O’Connor, his boss on the time and a former MLB lead negotiator.
Manfred turned down one alternative to affix MLB full-time within the early Nineteen Nineties — he had simply made accomplice — and one other after the 1994-95 strike. When he relented and went in-house in 1998, he did so with the caveat he didn’t must relocate to New York from D.C. He rapidly determined that was a mistake and moved.
Earlier than changing into commissioner, Manfred’s most high-profile work got here on the game’s numerous steroids scandals. However he was additionally steadily assigned duties that broadened his scope. Someday when he was within the Dominican Republic, he obtained a name from then-commissioner Selig with the cost of negotiating a take care of Comcast over the distribution of MLB Community.
“Properly, I’m pleased to do this, however I don’t know something about something,” Manfred advised his boss of TV carriage negotiations.
To get the lay of the land, Selig suggested Manfred to name McGuirk, who’s a veteran media government. That course of performed itself over time and again however with totally different tutors. By means of the chapter of Dodgers proprietor Frank McCourt, a messy authorized affair, Manfred realized extra concerning the governance aspect of the sport.
“From the start, Rob and I not solely hit it off, however are like-minded on many topics,” Selig mentioned. “As any chief government will let you know, you develop confidence in any person after they’ve efficiently finished different issues proper.”
Manfred and Selig labored intently collectively over twenty years. (Steve Ruark / Related Press)
A number of instances, Selig mentioned he supposed to retire then delayed and delayed once more. However to at the present time, Manfred says he by no means thought Selig was making ready him for the highest job.
“Folks underestimate how intelligent Bud is,” Manfred mentioned. “I by no means had the sense that I used to be being groomed. I swear to you — possibly you say, ‘You’re a dope whenever you look again and also you take a look at the issues he requested me to do,’ you may say, ‘How may you might have missed that?’
“We actually have by no means talked about it. I actually don’t assume even the day he determined he was going to step apart and appointed the (search) committee, I don’t assume he’d made his thoughts up that he was going to be supportive of me.”
Selig known as {that a} “truthful assertion,” noting he wished to let the committee do its work.
“When one says, ‘Properly, was he being groomed?’ Properly, it turned out that his expertise was a assist to him and to us,” Selig mentioned. “It’s additionally true that he and I by no means talked about it. It was extra motion, it was extra the issues that we did, why we did ‘em, and the way we did ‘em. So when you mentioned, ‘Who has that form of expertise?’ He had it.”
Manfred mentioned he all the time caught to what he known as the perfect piece of recommendation his father gave: Don’t fear concerning the subsequent job, as a result of when you do your present job effectively, the following will deal with itself.
“I by no means considered being the commissioner,” Manfred mentioned, “and I by no means did one rattling factor that was purposely designed to place myself to be commissioner.”
5 years in the past, the game Manfred oversaw was caught on a carousel of scandal and discontent. The Houston Astros created an uproar by dishonest, and Manfred threw extra gas on the fireplace when he referred to the championship trophy as a “piece of metallic.” Homeowners and gamers then fought over the sport’s economics throughout a pandemic, which foreshadowed the 2021-22 lockout. Manfred at one level even crossed over right into a nationwide political drama. In 2021, he moved the All-Star Recreation out of Atlanta at a time when Georgia’s voting legal guidelines have been underneath scrutiny.
And simply as minor leaguers began publicly lambasting the league over low wages, Manfred was about to embark on an initiative that arguably has contributed most to the picture that some maintain of the commissioner as a ruthless go well with.
Manfred undertook a sweeping discount of the standard affiliate farm system that he had lengthy described as “chaos.” The overhaul stripped 40 cities of their affiliated groups and triggered a wave of response from followers and politicians who howled that he was harming the sport’s long-term future — and maybe even the small-town America of which Manfred himself is a product.
“Folks by no means need to provide the advantage of doubt whenever you need to change,” Manfred mentioned. “Their speedy response is, ‘Oh, my God, it’s going to be worse.’”
Years later, he known as the trouble “an unallied success,” partly as a result of most of these markets nonetheless have some type of baseball, even when not affiliated with a giant league membership. He additionally pointed towards improved services for gamers and, for the remaining groups, a brand new, extra steady system that has triggered extra funding from non-public fairness.
“We took care of each small city,” Manfred mentioned. “The very fact of the matter is that the rationale the outcry died down is that for even probably the most affected cities, they ended up higher off than they have been earlier than we undertook the change.”
Many have disagreed over time, however the clamor isn’t what it as soon as was. The change is completed.
The game nonetheless faces massive issues. Pitching accidents are rampant. Range throughout the sport stays an evergreen sore level, as do native tv blackouts. The sport’s relationship to betting stays controversial. And whereas the clock solved one aesthetic woe, the excessive variety of strikeouts nonetheless frustrates many a fan.
Maybe no group detests Manfred greater than A’s followers, who blame him for permitting the group to depart Oakland.
Manfred has aroused the ire of A’s followers. (Brandon Vallance / Getty Photos)
But regardless of all of it, baseball total has been much less frenzied with controversy than it as soon as was. Most of the points that plagued the midpoint of Manfred’s tenure have reached some form of decision, or simmered.
The A’s certainly fled Oakland, heading to Sacramento for no less than three seasons earlier than a deliberate transfer to Las Vegas. Minor leaguers efficiently unionized. This week, Carlos Beltrán, a ringleader of the Astros’ dishonest, fell lower than 20 votes shy of induction into the Corridor of Fame.
And, this 12 months, Atlanta hosts the All-Star Recreation.
“I do really feel like we’re in a greater spot,” Manfred mentioned.
In addition to the clock, Manfred believes a dialogue of his influence ought to take a look at two undertakings in his tenure: no missed video games due to a labor problem, and no missed broadcasts regardless of upheaval within the media business.
“It is a sleeper,” he mentioned, “and I don’t assume individuals perceive how important it was: our capacity to face up to the change within the media surroundings with out ever having a recreation not broadcast.”
In 2023, amidst cord-cutting and the chapter of a significant sports activities broadcasting firm, Diamond Sports activities Group, the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks each have been left and not using a regional sports activities community to hold them — in the midst of a season. However the commissioner’s workplace had ready by basically turning itself right into a regional sports activities community.
This 12 months, MLB plans to broadcast 5 groups, and the way forward for native TV distribution is maybe Manfred’s best ongoing problem.
“We had no native media,” Manfred mentioned. “We had nothing. “In a extremely brief time frame, we managed to get it up and working in a approach that saved the sport in entrance of followers.”
The opposite problem is Manfred’s bottom-line report in labor negotiations. Since baseball’s devastating 1994-95 strike, he has overseen each collective bargaining settlement negotiation for the homeowners. On his watch, MLB has not missed a recreation attributable to a piece stoppage. Issues obtained furry in 2021-22 when gamers demanded a slew of modifications, however a full 162-game slate was nonetheless scheduled and performed.
Mentioned Manfred: “Each spherical of bargaining that you simply go (by way of) that you simply don’t lose a recreation is a extremely important accomplishment.”
His possible closing go-round could be the largest check but.
A lockout nearly actually looms in 2026. Exactly how lengthy it lasts will form how Manfred’s tenure as commissioner is remembered.
The curiosity is whether or not the homeowners as soon as once more pursue a wage cap, the identical problem that introduced the game to a halt within the devastating 1994-95 strike. How aggressively Manfred and the homeowners pursue a cap, then, may effectively have an effect on Manfred’s legacy. “The cap commissioner,” or “the lockout commissioner,” are monikers nonetheless in play.
Franchise values have all the time risen in baseball, and guaranteeing that development continues is Manfred’s accountability. Steve Greenberg has represented a slew of MLB groups once they’re put on the market, together with the Minnesota Twins at current. He contends that baseball’s lack of a cap lowers franchise values in comparison with these of different main sports activities.
“The notion round baseball is that and not using a wage cap, its values will lag behind, no less than behind the NFL and the NBA, and that’s been the case,” Greenberg mentioned. “We’ll see what occurs in Rob’s closing negotiation.”
In arguing that the sport’s financial system wants change, Greenberg referenced the disparity between decrease payroll golf equipment and better payroll franchises. “That’s not a wholesome scenario,” he mentioned. The subject has been top-of-mind inside the sport all offseason with the Los Angeles Dodgers flexing their monetary muscle. McGuirk himself averted the phrase “cap,” although he advocated a want for “new pondering.”
“One foot in entrance of the opposite doesn’t actually work anymore,” McGuirk mentioned. “Rob is, I believe, dedicated to that form of new pondering. I believe his command of what the 30 homeowners need, I believe, could be very correct. … There’s very excessive expectations of possibly fixing some issues.”
Tony Clark, the pinnacle of the Main League Baseball Gamers Affiliation, has mentioned the gamers won’t ever comply with a cap.
In the end, Manfred has not mentioned what route he’ll go, apart from a common want to enhance labor relations and “go away for the following man a scenario wherein we now have higher alignment with the gamers by way of pulling collectively with a purpose to make the sport pretty much as good as we are able to make it.”
“And I imply that as broad because it sounds,” Manfred mentioned. “I’m not suggesting any specific answer.”
Regardless of Manfred’s said want for détente, Clark mentioned what finally issues are the alternatives that the commissioner makes.
“Gamers perceive the distinction between phrases and actions. Phrases are straightforward, actions are significant,” Clark mentioned in a press release. “As we negotiate our subsequent settlement with the commissioner’s workplace, it is going to be the actions that matter.”
However one motion appears to be like nearly sure. Manfred mentioned an offseason lockout, as there was in 2021-22, ought to be thought of the brand new norm.
MLB appears headed for an additional lockout after the present CBA expires in 2026. (James Black / Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Photos)
“In a weird approach, it’s really a constructive,” he mentioned. “There may be leverage related to an offseason lockout and the method of collective bargaining underneath the NLRA works based mostly on leverage. The beauty of offseason lockouts is the leverage that exists will get utilized between the bargaining events.”
Clark disagreed.
“Gamers know from first-hand expertise {that a} lockout is neither routine nor constructive,” Clark mentioned. “It’s a weapon, plain and easy, carried out to strain gamers and their households by taking away a participant’s capacity to work.”
Manfred drew a distinction. In comparison with an in-season work stoppage, he mentioned the offseason selection is “like utilizing a .22 (caliber firearm), versus a shotgun or a nuclear weapon.”
That it’s a troublesome activity to handle baseball’s 30 homeowners is effectively understood. “They don’t must do what I say essentially,” Manfred mentioned. Much less identified is how he really does it, a ability that may as soon as once more be examined as the following lockout looms and the commissioner works to perform the remainder of his agenda earlier than stepping apart.
“Thirty years in the past, it was extra about private relationships, me placing my hand in your shoulder and saying, ‘I want you on this one,’” Manfred mentioned. “That’s not the way you get guys now. You bought to persuade them you’re proper.”
When he was working for commissioner, Manfred delivered a speech that relied closely on one thing MLB had finished little of beforehand: fan analysis. A constant theme was the client’s want for extra athleticism and motion.
“Which, no kidding — actually, proper?” Manfred mentioned. “However you may lose sight of that. And it does get again to, how do you develop a consensus, how do you handle the homeowners? I believe we realized from the very starting that that form of quantitative information was totally different than what that they had seen for a very long time.”
Close to the highest of Manfred’s agenda earlier than he exits is an bold plan for his workplace to take over native broadcasting rights. He desires management in order that he can promote extra nationwide tv packages to streaming firms. Baseball’s nationwide TV offers expire in 2028, and that’s when MLB desires to money in because the NBA did final 12 months with media offers valued at a mixed $77 billion.
“Perhaps that’s an 11-year deal from ’29 to ’40. And, you already know, possibly that’s a $100 billion deal,” mentioned McGuirk, as soon as Turner Broadcasting System’s CEO. “These are actually massive, massive, massive boxcar bets that he’s taking a look at for setting the way forward for baseball, lengthy after he’s gone. And I believe he’s doing all the proper issues.”
However such an overhaul requires corollary modifications to the game’s income sharing, which implies a giant political drawback amongst homeowners, whose TV rights drastically differ in value. It additionally provides a layer of the potential struggle with the gamers’ union in 2026, as a result of gamers have a say in income sharing. Notably, within the age of Shohei Ohtani, promoting content material packages for giant cash isn’t only a home ambition.
“Our attain has been broken by the RSNs lately,” Manfred mentioned. “We’ve got an untapped asset by way of our Japanese, Korean, Taiwan market that streamers can be actually, actually all for.”
Manfred additionally desires to settle MLB’s two subsequent enlargement markets earlier than he leaves, although his confidence degree in getting that finished modifications from each day. It relies upon largely on what occurs with the Tampa Bay Rays, who’re in limbo following tens of millions in injury to their stadium attributable to Hurricane Milton in October.
When the time comes to decide on Manfred’s successor, baseball’s homeowners could have a basic determination to make. As a result of the way forward for native media is so unsure, and since the enterprise has grown so massive, it’s attainable some will want a commissioner of a distinct fabric. Maybe the homeowners will search out a top-flight media government to guide the game. However Manfred believes the candidate’s vocation is the improper central query.
“The variable that you simply ought to have a look at is inside versus exterior,” he mentioned, referring as to if the following commissioner is an inside or exterior rent. “When you obtained the perfect government on the earth, dropped him in that workplace Day 1 with no indoctrination, he’d fail miserably, is my view.”
Not each official in baseball is satisfied Manfred will really go away in January 2029, or that he desires to depart. As one baseball government requested rhetorically: How else may he make $25 million a 12 months?
Manfred, nonetheless, factors to his seven grandchildren, and a want to see the world for enjoyable, moderately than work. Requested if he would keep if homeowners made that request of him, he mentioned he’s “fairly set.”
“I’ve had a job since I used to be 14, and I actually do imagine that in a management position, there’s a window the place you set your mark on the sport, the enterprise, no matter it’s,” Manfred mentioned. “And I believe on the finish of this time period, good, dangerous or detached, I’ll have had my alternative to place my mark on the sport. And it’s time for any person with a recent imaginative and prescient to take the sport over.”
(High photograph: Rob Tringali / MLB Images by way of Getty Photos)