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Selig likely to stay

For Bud Selig, retirement once again will have to wait.

A Major League Baseball source familiar with the situation confirmed Tuesday that team owners will vote Thursday during meetings in Phoenix to extend Selig for two more years through 2014 as commissioner of baseball. Selig is expected to accept that mandate.

Selig, who turns 78 in July, repeatedly had insisted he would retire when his current three-year extension expired after the 2012 season.

“This is clearly it,” he said after receiving that extension in January 2008. “I can say this without equivocation.”

Selig maintained he would move on to other stated desires, such as teaching at the University of Wisconsin, his alma mater where a chair was established in his name in the History Department. He also wants to write a book about his experiences as commissioner.

But, as Selig neared the last year of that extension, owners began pressing him to stay longer. No search committee was formed to find a successor, which made it even more difficult for Selig to leave office as planned.

The primary factor is that Selig has shepherded the game through an era of unparalleled prosperity, which owners don’t want to interrupt. The baseline for that renaissance was extended labor peace, which Selig finally managed to achieve after the devastating player strike in 1994-’95.