If Ueberroth would be interested in a second tour as Commissioner, he’d be my pick.
Why Ueberroth?
Well, do you remember the 1985 strike? Exactly.
At the time, it looked like MLB was headed toward another 1981-style train wreck, and thanks to Ueberrroth, it was over in a day and a half, rather than obliterating the entire summer.
Bowie Kuhn, like Selig, was a duplicitous shill for the owners. He presided over the owners’ attempt to break the union that resulted in the 1981 strike.
As I understand it, Frick and Chandler were pretty much do-nothing, go-along commissioners, who were lucky not to be ruling the roost in interesting times.
The Good Commissioners, by which I mean Uebberoth, Giammatti, and Vincent, were men from outside of baseball who loved the game, but needed a position in MLB a lot less than MLB needed them. And that’s the combination of characteristics that you need - someone who (a) cares deeply about the game, (b) has demonstrated their administrative skills and ability to bring diverse groups together elsewhere, and consequently © can tell MLB to shove it, if push comes to shove.
I agree with RickJay that any president of a major college or university who is also a baseball fan would do a much better job than the hacks from inside MLB that usually wind up running things.
Speaking of Selig, didn’t y’all just love the bit where he said two teams were going to go under before the end of the season, then he completely retracted it less than a day later when challenged about it?
Like RickJay said, “he’s dishonest and isn’t very good at lying, either”. Next to Selig, Richard Nixon looks like a man of integrity.