In 1994, anticipating George Mitchell's appointment as MLB Commissioner

A 1994 article predicted George Mitchell would very shortly be Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Referencing comments at that time, Steve Marantz' article in The Sporting News:

• "Mitchell can be coy. Baseball owners, fans and media will have to get used to him. A profile in Congressional Quarterly's "Politics in America" describes him thusly: "As a lawyer, judge and politician, Mitchell relates to interviews as debates
• and treats questions as three-dimensional traps.
• He often responds to questions not by answering them but by questioning their premises -- usually with a few words of courteous preface such as |with all due respect.'"

(Marantz): "

"If you become baseball commissioner, will you bring major league baseball to Maine?"

For a long instant Mitchell gives me the twice over. Then, a wide grin.

"We have a good Double-A team in Portland this year," he says. "A florida Marlins team. My friend, Dan Burke, runs it. I haven't had the opportunity to see them play yet. But I hope to do so soon."

I give Mitchell a chance to duck another question.

"Can you talk about becoming baseball commissioner?"

• "Nobody's offered me anything," Mitchell says. "I haven't accepted anything. I'm getting a lot of proposals from other fields. Corporations, businesses, universities, law firms and others. My intention is to wait a period of time and see what interest me the most."

Mitchell's office had warned me that the senator is not discussing baseball issues of substance: the antitrust exemption, expansion, collective bargaining, cable copyright law. That leaves softball.

"Generally speaking, would you talk about your connection to baseball?"

• "I've been a lifelong baseball fan. I played Junior Legion baseball through high school. I've been to Fenway Park hundreds of times...."

"Old Orchard Beach used to have a Triple-A team called the Maine Guides," he goes on. "It came from Charleston and now it's in Wilkes-Barre. Gary Thorne occasions I sat in play announcer. On a few occasions I sat in with Gary and did color."

"How did it compare with being a senator?"

"It was different."

"Do you remember your first trip to Fenway?""

• THIS SIMPLE QUESTION SO OVERWHELMS MITCHELL THAT HE DOES NOT ANSWER. (SM)

Marantz: "King of the hills: Where does Mitchell stand on becoming the next commissioner? Like the politician he is, Mitchell isn't saying.

Mitchell appears stumped, gazing at the Capitol's fancy marble work. He ruminates."

• INSTEAD OF SAYING ONE WORD PUBLICLY ABOUT HIS RED SOX, or where he stands on becoming commissioner, HE CHANGES THE SUBJECT. TO GUESS WHAT? THE YANKEES. A tough subject for Mitchell going way back. (sm)

(Marantz): "I can remember one of my brothers taking me to see the Yankees," he says finally. "I remember DiMaggio hitting a long ball that was just foul. It must have been just after the war."

"It baseball in trouble?"

Mitchell winks.

"Nice try," he says.

• Although Mitchell says he has not been offered the job, many baseball observers say he and the owners already have reached an agreement. One of the Red Sox's limited partners with close ties to Mitchell was seen shopping with his fiancee for an apartment in Manhattan this spring, fueling speculation."

• (MITCHELL IS THE CAUSE OF PRES. GEORGE BUSH #1 STUPIDLY GOING BACK ON HIS 'NO NEW TAXES' PLEDGE....)

Marantz: "Once elected majority leader, Mitchell had a seat at an exclusive poker game whose stakes included the White House. Part of Mitchell's job was to prevent a second term for President Bush. Political writer Sidney Blumenthal described part of Mitchell's strategy in The New Yorker:

• "With exquisite politesse and delicacy, through a protracted budget summit in 1990, Mitchell coaxed George Bush to abandon his iron-clad campaign pledge, 'No New Taxes' -- an act that repudiated the Reaganite theology and proved devastating to Bush politically."

Thanks in no small part to Mitchell, Bill Clinton won the presidency. With Mitchell working the inside levers, Clinton's controversial first budget was enacted and NAFTA narrowly passed.

• Two summers ago, shortly after Fay Vincent's forced resignation, Mitchell experienced an epiphany. it occurred while the Senate was locked in an all-night filibuster. He later told the Bowdoin College alumini magazine that he was struck by a thought: "What an I doing here? Why am I doing this? I'm going to be 60 next year and is this really what I want to do with the rest of my life." Mitchell recalled speculating on what he would do if he were not in the Senate. "I said ...'I just think I'll be commissioner of baseball, get paid several hundred thousand dollars more a year, watch baseball games and I won't have to stay up all night listening to Senator D'Amato."

His musings were not groundless. One of the owners first broached the commissioner's job to Mitchell in 1990, he told the magazine. In December 1992, interim commissioner Bud Selig was in Washington for Sen. Howard Metzenbaum's hearings on baseball's antitrust exemption. Mitchell and Selig talked about the vacant commissioner's job....."

• Mr. Marantz concludes by noting 1994's upcoming baseball crisis might cause Mitchell to stay on the sidelines. He wouldn't want his name involved in what would be a mess. Sure things, ok. (sm)

• Reference, "The Maine Man:Senator George Mitchell," by Steve Marantz, published in the Sporting News, June 13, 1994

(P.S. A politician trades in favors--big ones. One cannot be a politician without doing this. If you think that lifestyle confers "integrity" on someone, have a nice day). sm

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