Randy Levine's resume includes a job with Bud Selig

• Toward the end of a NY Times article about Randy Levine's voice in the Yankee organization, mention is made of a 1996 labor agreement Levine worked on while
• 'between jobs at City Hall:'

NY Times, Richard Sandomir: "the 1996 (MLB) labor agreement ...was negotiated by (Randy) Levine for the owners while he

• was between jobs at City Hall."...

Levine was hired by Selig and baseball owners to work out a new agreement with the players union. He was described as the voice of Bud Selig at a point in his 1996 'between jobs' event,

• although owners were divided on his plan to the point where one faction tried to remove him from the job:

(NY Times, 11/3/96, by Murray Chass): "In the attack on (Randy) Levine, in a Chicago paper, unnamed owners called for his dismissal, saying the only reason he would not be fired was

• that his mother-in-law is a friend of Selig's wife."

From NY Times by Murray Chass, 11/3/96, "Labor Deal in Jeopardy as Selig Stays Silent."

• (David Peterson, 4/97): "More revealing still was New York Times Baseball writer Murray Chass, In Chass's November 3 story about some of the internecine struggles then taking place among the 30 ownership groups that comprise the Baseball cartel, he fingered a mysteriously

unnamed Chicago-area sportswriter for helping Reinsdorf plant what Chass called an "attack on [Randy] Levine" in one of the Chicago newspapers.

• "In the attack on Levine, in a Chicago paper, unnamed owners called for his dismissal, saying the only reason he would not be fired was that his mother-in-law is a friend of Selig's wife," was how Chass described the smear campaign coming from within the owners' ranks.

"Reinsdorf's hand appeared to be so evident in that attack," Chass continued, "that during a conference call of Major League Baseball's executive council [on Oct. 30], other owners criticized Reinsdorf, a council member, for it." ("A Silent Selig Speaks Volumes About His Take on the Talks," Nov. 3.)

• Just three days before, in his "On Baseball" column., (Jerome) Holtzman had quoted an unnamed owner who averred that "Randy's mother-in-law [who's from Milwaukee] is one of Sue Selig's best friends. [Sue is Selig's wife]. What Randy has done is horrendous. Bud is bleeding and very hurt, but there isn't much he can do."

Pretty good smear. In his effort to help Reinsdorf smear Levine, Holtzman went so far as to charge Levine with assisting Donald Fehr in Fehr's effort to smear the owners by "putting a monkey on the owners' back: clearly, they are the ogres," said Holtzman, mocking Fehr and Levine. ("Owners doubt that Levine is the real deal," Chicago Tribune, Oct. 30.)"

• By David Peterson, from "Chicago Ink April 1997," ink.uchicago.edu/page_olga_made/archives/april97/holtz.html, "A Stenographer to Power: Jerome Holtzman"

• (posted on this blog 5/25/08)

P.S. From David Peterson's piece linked above, a slice of life in April 1997:

• "The verdict is in, sports fans. Throw out Holtzman's defensive nonsense about the "New York press" having sided with the Players Association

• because of its neo-Marxist sympathies.

Just as the New York Times and Donald Fehr have fingered Jerry Reinsdorf the self-seeking, manipulative, power-crazy man that he is, so the Times's Murray Chass fingered Jerome Holtzman what he is. A stenographer to power."

• Reference, NY Times article, "As Team President, Randy Levine is the real voice of the Yankees," 3/27/09 by Richard Sandomir

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