Look beyond Selig's rumpled suits

NOTHING, IT SEEMS, ever makes Bud Selig look good. His best suits hang on him as if he just emerged from a river. His best moves are often ripped and/or misinterpreted.

When he's right, he's lucky.

When he's wrong, he's evil.

Baseball's Civil Rights Weekend moves to Atlanta just as Georgia decides Arizona's immigration law is a good idea. The All-Star Game arrives this summer in Phoenix under the same cloud, Selig's silence on the subject seen by the law's critics as an implied endorsement.

Next year will be Selig's 20th as commissioner of baseball and allegedly his last. I say allegedly because he's retired a couple of times already, absolutely, no turning back, except that there was some pressing issue that convinced him, with significant prodding from an ownership group that now sees him as its Pete Rozelle, that he needed to hang around a little bit longer.

Here are some of the things that Bud has hung around for: a crippling strike in 1994; interleague play; revenue-sharing; the wild card; realignment; consolidating the American and National leagues; a uniform rulebook strike zone; an unbalanced schedule; an All-Star Game that ended tied, an All-Star Game that matters; instant replay; the first labor agreement that did not involve a work stoppage in 30 years and a second labor agreement that did not involve a work stoppage; a steroid scandal that threatens the legitimacy of baseball's hallowed records; a Congressional investigation that threatened its antitrust exemption; an expansion of its drug-testing program; the creation of the World Baseball Classic; the advent and recognized excellence of several internet properties and more recently, the launch of its instantly successful MLB Television Network.

Oh, and a sport that was assumed to be on a natural and unavoidable decline back in 1992 continues to break its own attendance marks and has seen revenues increase from just over a billion dollars to nearly $7 billion during Selig's reign.

So how come no love for Bud? How come, amid an eye-pleasing and eye-popping weekend that included too many civil-rights leaders to mention, with a tone of greater work ahead - and with some really cool uniforms - human-rights organizations have lambasted Selig for having it in Atlanta at all?