Mark Attanasio \u201chas been everything anyone would want in an owner.\u201d<\/p>\n
He has embraced Milwaukee, taken the Milwaukee Brewers organization \u201cto the next level,\u201d and made thoughtful, smart business decisions.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the kind of praise a happy fan of the local baseball team might well offer.<\/p>\n
In this case, the praise comes from Wendy Selig-Preib, the woman who was president and CEO of the Brewers when the decisions were made in 2004 and 2005 to put the team up for sale and to choose the Los Angeles financial manager as the new owner.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Selig-Prieb lives in Arizona, is no longer a baseball executive, and is no longer on the very hot seat she found herself on as the top executive of a team with long and dispiriting stream of losing seasons in the 1990s and early 2000s.<\/p>\n
During a visit to her hometown, she made a rare public appearance at the Law School, where she graduated in 1988, for an \u201cOn the Issues\u201d conversation with Mike Gousha, the school\u2019s Distinguished Fellow in Law and Public Policy.<\/p>\n
Upbeat, warm, and gracious even in discussing parts of her career that were acrimonious at the time, Selig-Prieb said she still regards Milwaukee as her hometown, but is happy with her life in Arizona. \u00a0She runs a business that sells women\u2019s clothing through trunk shows, does other business consulting, is involved in community and philanthropic work (much of it around women\u2019s issues), and is pleased to be keeping her commitment to adopt a lifestyle in which she regularly \u00a0is home after school for her twelve-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n
She said the greatest frustration of her thirteen-year career as an executive with the Brewers was how the quality of the team was affected by the economics of baseball, in which small-market teams had much less money to spend on players than large-market teams. \u201cIt was not a fun time,\u201d she said.\u00a0 While that gap remains a major issue, the development of revenue sharing among teams has reduced the disparity. \u201cThe economic system is a very different one\u201d now, she said. Selig-Prieb counted her work on revenue-sharing as part of the owners\u2019 bargaining team as one of her major accomplishments.<\/p>\n
Other accomplishments she mentioned: Her role in construction of Miller Park, which replaced County Stadium in 2002; the hiring of Doug Melvin, who remains the team\u2019s general manager and whose personnel moves are regarded as a key to the team\u2019s much-improved record in recent years; and the strengthening of the team\u2019s player development system, which brought players such as Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder to the team.<\/p>\n
Gousha asked her if there would there be a Brewers team in Milwaukee now without Miller Park and the revenue-sharing changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how you could ever answer that question yes,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cNow baseball is here, not only for this generation of baseball fans, but future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selig-Prieb said she had no regrets about the sale of the team. \u201cI felt it was the right time and right thing to do,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel it is just as right now as it was then.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selig-Prieb remains closely attached to the game — her husband, Laurel Prieb, is an executiveof Major League Baseball, and\u00a0 her father, Bud Selig, is, of course, the commissioner. But it\u2019s also a matter of simple affection for baseball and for Milwaukee.\u00a0 Through television and the Internet, she stays up\u00a0on the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still a Brewers fan through and through,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Attanasio \u201chas been everything anyone would want in an owner.\u201d He has embraced Milwaukee, taken the Milwaukee Brewers organization \u201cto the next level,\u201d and made thoughtful, smart business decisions. That\u2019s the kind of praise a happy fan of the local baseball team might well offer. In this case, the praise comes from Wendy Selig-Preib, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,46,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milwaukee","category-speakers","category-sports-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}