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Ladies and gentlemen. I would like to thank all of you for being here today. This is a great pleasure for me to have this opportunity to talk to you about baseball. During my tenure, beginning in 1992 -- first as the interim Commissioner and then in 1998 as Commissioner -- we have witnessed dramatic and unprecedented change in baseball, much of which has been difficult for me both personally and professionally. While change is never easy in a social institution, which I believe baseball certainly is, the changes we have made have already begun to pave the way for a great and significant renaissance that will ensure the health of the game well into the 21st Century.

As an old history major, I often put events into the perspective of history. I believe that 50 years from now when sports historians and journalists examine the recent past of our great game, they will point to this period as a turning point. It is up to us as the guardians of the game to attempt to balance the wonderful history and traditions of baseball with the societal changes that have taken place over the past few decades. We will do everything within our power to make the necessary adjustments to bring baseball in line with those changes and make the game greater and more popular than at any time in its history.

There is no doubt in my mind that baseball is the greatest game ever invented. Its result is not determined by the expiration of a set amount of time. It is not a simulated war game in which two sides battle mightily over turf; nor is it a mad dash from one end of a field or court to the other in the pursuit of an accumulation of goals. In territorially based games, there are two goals or nets or baskets. In baseball, there is only one place where a score is counted: home plate, where play begins and also where play may come to an end.

My dear friend and former Commissioner, the late Bart Giamatti wrote passionately about the game, often comparing the journey of a base runner to that of Odysseus. One of his passages that I've always enjoyed is from "The Green Fields of the Mind," an essay that appeared in the Yale Alumni Magazine in 1977.

Bart wrote: "It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops ... and summer is gone."

To Bart, baseball was an intellectual pursuit, as it is for many of our most devout and endearing fans. The game is filled with nuances and brings into play so many variables that the study and meaning of the game's statistics have captured the imaginations of baseball fans for generations. In what other sport can a single number bring instant recognition, such as 60, 61, 70 or 73; or .406 or .367; or 755; or 511; or 2,632? Each game brings with it a roller coaster of emotions -- slow and languid one moment, fast and furious the next. There is nothing like the intensity inherent in a game-on-the-line situation. It is almost palpable; it quickens the beat of the heart. Take the 2001 World Series. Yankees versus D-Backs. Seventh game. Bottom of the ninth. Score tied, 2-2. Bases loaded. One out. Relief pitcher Mariano Rivera on the mound for New York. Luis Gonzalez at the plate. The count is no balls and one strike. Rivera winds up. Gonzalez readies at the plate. What tension!

The essence of the game, I believe, is near perfect. I often wonder if Alexander Cartwright truly understood the symmetry he had created more than a century and a half ago when he marked off ninety feet between the bases on Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. Also perfect is the distance between the pitcher's mound and home plate -- 60-feet, six-inches. Bart always wondered about the mystical multiples of three and four that permeated the game, such as four balls and four bases; three strikes, three outs, nine innings, and 60-feet, six-inches.

Yet, for all its perfection, its beauty, its uniqueness, and its incomparable historical relevance, baseball, like all institutions, must continually reevaluate and reassess itself, and make necessary changes, no matter how big or slight, to sustain its fan base and attract new ones. This is the purpose of my new task force: The Commissioner's Initiative: Baseball in the 21st Century. The panel members are made up of experts in their fields, from academia, broadcasting, marketing, and baseball. We've met once already and will meet regularly over the next six or seven months. We will look for fresh, bold and creative ideas with which we can grow the game and make it more compelling for our present fans and for future fans, not only here in our country but throughout the world.

As did the panel members, you may ask, why now? As you know, Major League Baseball has been involved in an internal war with labor for thirty-five years. It has been owners versus players; the clubs versus the Players Association; and sometimes clubs versus clubs with the Commissioner in the middle. This conflict, which began with the players arguing for basic rights and continued through financial uncertainty where the clubs were compelled to seek financial relief and competitive balance, hopefully, can be put to rest. In fact, I believe the conflict must be put to rest for the game to proceed as a relevant and popular attraction. On August 30th of last year, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association entered into an historic labor agreement that in my opinion, provided significant economic solutions to baseball's problems, which will allow for greater competitive balance amongst the clubs. Equally important, for the first time in more than thirty years we were able to enter into a labor agreement without either a strike or a lockout.

The direct and residual damage caused by thirty-five years of bickering, accusations, and threats has been immeasurable. Just the perception of baseball as a troubled sport became a self-fulfilling prophecy and created a negative dynamic that affected every part of our game and our business. This new Basic Agreement, I hope, will provide the foundation for a lengthy peace in which we can promote the many positive features of baseball and work together for the betterment of the game.

One area in which we must never waver is in the effort to bring more kids to the game, whether through greater participation or through greater attendance and viewership. Baseball has always served as a bridge that binds the generations. The ballpark is a venue at which fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, grandparents and grandchildren can congregate and share their experiences. How many of you still remember the first time you walked into a ballpark on the hand of a parent or grandparent and first experienced that great expanse of green? The experience has been depicted in films and described in books and magazine articles. The experience is one of our game's greatest strengths and one of its most powerful and enduring features. We must continue to build on the mythology that surrounds it. Nothing is more important than bringing kids to the game. Kids are our lifeblood; they are the future of the game.

While Major League Baseball benefits from Little League and all the other youth leagues, we have made our own efforts to bring kids to ball fields, particularly those from the inner-cities. We created the RBI Program, which stands for Reviving Baseball in the Inner-Cities, nearly fourteen years ago and, with the help of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, have seen it grow to include more than 150,000 youngsters from 167 cities worldwide. We have also formed the Urban Youth Initiative and have begun creating a baseball academy for children, ages 10 to 15, in the Los Angeles area. There they will learn not only how to play the game but how to live their lives. In partnership with the Major League Baseball Players Association, we have founded the Baseball Tomorrow Fund, which over the past few years has donated millions of dollars to the funding of baseball related projects that benefit children.

We also have a wonderful educational program called Breaking Barriers: In Sports, In Life, which is administered by Sharon Robinson, Jackie and Rachel Robinson's daughter, and is designed to teach school-aged children the values and traits necessary to deal with the barriers and obstacles that will challenge their lives. These are some of our youth-based programs, but we must do more to keep the attraction of baseball alive for our youngsters. Some people have said the game is too slow and dull for children growing up in today's fast-paced society. While we know that is not so, we must do everything we can to make our game more attractive to the younger generation.

We must especially pay greater attention to attracting more African Americans and Hispanics to the game and improve the diversity of our fan base. Presently, 22 percent of our fans are African American or Hispanic. As the National Pastime, baseball should have a wider appeal to people of all ethnic groups.

We must also do more, much more, in the broadcast area. While baseball like the other major sports is a victim of the decline in national ratings among the major networks because of the infusion of cable, we must find new ways to try to reverse the downward national network trend and bring in new viewers. Local over-the-air and cable ratings have stayed relatively stable in recent years, and, though, our World Series ratings declined last season, baseball's divisional series ratings were up and the League Championship Series ratings were level with the previous year.

Major League Baseball has made a concerted effort to cooperate more fully with our network partners in recent seasons. In years past, we were always reticent about trying new things. In fact, in the early days of television some baseball owners were reluctant to televise many of their games for fear it would adversely affect attendance. There were many people in baseball that believed television was detrimental to the game. Now, cameras in the dugouts, on umpires and microphones on key personnel have become standard practice, all in the attempt to capture the sights and sounds of the game, which provide a more entertaining product to the viewer. Our relationship with television has evolved and improved dramatically over the last 50 years.

I give considerable credit to former National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle who forty years ago sold NFL owners on the concept of "on any given Sunday," which served as the centerpiece for the growth of the NFL. He understood the value of sharing national broadcasting revenue and recognized the great attraction his sport would have on the television viewer. We must find ways to make baseball a better TV sport.

For most of our history, baseball has been regarded as stodgy and old-fashioned, a dinosaur, big and slow and reluctant to change. And like the dinosaur, the game, critics presumed would soon disappear. At an Associated Press convention in 1959, Oliver E. Kuechle, then the sports editor of the Milwaukee Journal, declared baseball moribund. We've been hearing that for decades, and continue to hear it. We sympathize with the remarks of Mark Twain when he said: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Baseball has outlasted generations of critics and we've survived two World Wars, a depression, gambling scandals, and the aforementioned labor conflicts. Granted, through most of it, baseball had little competition. Throughout the first half of the 20th Century, professional football and basketball were secondary sports to the big three: baseball, boxing, and horse racing. Boxing and horse racing have lost their universal appeal and been replaced by the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. Now the competition is fierce, not only with football and basketball, but with other, newer entertainment options as well, including the internet, computer-based games and reality television.

We have responded to the challenge over the last decade and have introduced more change to the game than we have seen in the previous 100 years combined. And it has not been easy. As mentioned earlier, bringing about change in any social institution is difficult. In baseball, because of the archaic and cumbersome league structure, which lasted through much of the 20th Century, and because of critics who were and continue to be resistant to change, it was treacherous going. Nonetheless, we introduced interleague play, a concept that was first proposed in 1948 by Bill Veeck and Hank Greenberg; three division formats in the American and National Leagues; the Wild Card and an extra tier of playoffs; a first phase of realignment; the consolidation of the umpiring and administrative functions of the American and National Leagues into the Commissioner's Office; the reaffirmation of the rule book strike zone; significant and meaningful revenue sharing among the clubs; and the expanded global reach of the game with season openers being played in Tokyo, San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Monterrey, Mexico.

You may recall that when we implemented the Wild Card and three-division play, we were a target for some national criticism. You would have thought we had defiled motherhood and the Bill of Rights. Critics accused us of cheapening the pennant races and the World Series. Now, nearly a decade later, it has worked out brilliantly -- as we thought it would. More than 90 percent of our fans love the Wild Card because more teams through September are battling for playoff berths.

The most important change -- one that I believe will forever alter the economic landscape of the game -- is revenue sharing. When I became interim Commissioner in 1992, revenue sharing, other than the sharing of national television rights fees and licensing revenue, was practically nonexistent. For decades, the American and National Leagues each had their own archaic and inconsequential formulas for sharing gate receipts that amounted to nothing more than a mere pittance. I had to convince the clubs that they no longer could do business as they did in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. It was a very painful process. Clubs were divided along the lines of large, medium and small markets and the infighting was vicious. But, in the end, it led to greater revenue sharing in the 1996 Collective Bargaining Agreement and the clubs' passing a resolution in January 2000 granting me historical and unprecedented authority to solve the game's economic problems. The resolution gave me the power to seek the meaningful revenue sharing that we were able to attain in the recently concluded labor negotiations. In 1993, my first full year as interim commissioner, only $20 million was transferred among the clubs. In 1996, the first year of the old Basic Agreement, the clubs transferred $50 million. By the end of that agreement, in 2002, the revenue sharing number had risen to $169 million. This year, we will transfer $258 million, a figure that will undoubtedly rise to well over $300 million by the end of the agreement in 2006. I am proud that during my tenure, revenue sharing amongst the clubs will have risen by 1500 percent.

Another important and historic development that came out of the January 2000 owners' meeting was the clubs' unanimous decision to centralize its internet rights and share all internet revenues equally. Down the road, I believe this may prove as beneficial to the health of baseball as the NFL's decision forty years ago to share its national television money.

The internet and interactive potential for baseball, the richest sport in terms of games and statistics is unlimited. Our ability to make the game -- audio, video, statistics, highlights, historical games -- convenient and accessible to fans is here today and will grow exponentially in the next decade. From the mobile phone to the desktop PC, from Cincinnati to Tokyo, 24 hours a day, our great game is available.

While the internet was developed more than 20 years ago with slightly different goals, it seems as though baseball is a prime beneficiary. Think about this. During the summer, the immense database at MLB.com must store more data than the library of congress. Then, every day, for that matter, virtually every second of every day, it must update the data for each pitch thrown in every game. The database must not only be vast, but it also must be dynamic, allowing for millions of inputs each day, and it must be accessible so that our fans can receive and retrieve the very latest information about their favorite team or player.

The ability to deliver information to fans around the globe instantly has enlarged our base and enriched those who already love the game.

This year MLB.com will inform, entertain and enrich about 750 million visitors. They are coming for the usual information, such as updated game information and statistics. But they are also coming to chat, listen and watch. In 2002, one million fans subscribed to our audio service so that they could listen to their favorite announcers calling their favorite team -- all live. This service has become the second largest radio service on the internet. And this year, MLB.com will stream approximately 1,000 out-of-market games, which will be a first for a sports league. Imagine the Dodger fan living in New York: at work or at home, he or she can now watch the Dodgers live on the computer. Young fans throughout the globe, who perhaps do not have ready access to live games can now watch the heroes they have only read about.

Using technology, we can assure our fans worldwide that they will always have baseball. Every generation is adopting the internet as the principal place to get news and entertainment, but none as quickly as our next generation of fans. We are in the midst of a technological revolution and it is important that baseball stays ahead of the curve.

Throughout the second half of the 1990s, I often talked about the great Renaissance the game was enjoying, particularly in light of the difficult times brought on by the 1994-95 players' strike. Attendance fell off by 20 percent in 1995 and it appeared that a full recovery would take years, perhaps more than a decade. Fortunately, thanks to a number of terrific on-field developments, the turn-around came more quickly than we could have imagined. First, in 1995 there was Cal Ripken and his remarkable record-breaking streak, eclipsing the previous mark of consecutive games played set by the legendary Lou Gehrig. That was soon followed by the compelling 1998 home run duel between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, in which both sluggers broke Roger Maris' single season mark of 61 homers. Game attendance surpassed 70 million for four straight seasons, beginning in 1998, and single season attendance records were set first in 1998 and then in 2000. Major League Baseball's attendance is greater than that of the National Football League, National Hockey League and National Basketball Association combined, and, when you add minor league attendance, baseball's total routinely exceeds 110 million fans per season.

In 1949, a year that was part of the so-called halcyon days of New York baseball, the three New York teams -- the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants -- drew five million fans combined. Last season, the Yankees and Mets drew more than six million. It used to be that a club had to draw one million fans to have a successful season. Now, clubs average nearly 2.5 million fans per season. In 1950, average attendance at a game was 14,105. Twenty years later, that average increased to only 15,130. Over the last few seasons, our clubs have nearly doubled the 1970 figure. Increased attendance can be attributed to a number of factors, one of which is the unprecedented boom in ballpark construction and another the retro designs that remind our fans of our glorious history and the nostalgia of such famous citadels as Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, and Shibe Park. Over the last ten years, new, fan-friendly ballparks have been built in Arizona, Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Colorado, Detroit, Houston, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Seattle. Another one will open this season in Cincinnati, with new ones on the way in Philadelphia, San Diego, and St. Louis. While these new ballparks are not panaceas by any means, they are popular destination points for fans and widely preferable to the so-called "cookie cutter" designs of stadiums that was used through the 1960s and 70s.

And internationally, the game is becoming more and more popular. One reason for our global growth is the game's diversity on the field. Twenty-six percent of all major league players on our opening day rosters and nearly fifty percent of all minor league players last season were born outside the 50 United States.

In 2001, Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki of Japan became the first player in twenty-seven years to be named Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year in the same season. Because of Ichiro's great popularity, television ratings of Major League Baseball games in Japan have skyrocketed. And this year, Japan's great power hitter, Hideki Matsui, will suit up as a New York Yankee. Matsui's following is expected to equal or surpass that of Ichiro, which will, of course, create even greater interest for Major League Baseball in Japan.

Baseball always has been extremely popular -- if the not the most popular sport -- in the Caribbean and Central America. This season, two developments -- the Expos playing 22 regular season games in San Juan Puerto Rico and the Yankees' signing of Jose Contreras of Cuba -- will fortify Major League Baseball's popularity throughout the region.

Equally important is our effort to take the game overseas. In a few weeks, we will open the 2003 regular season with a two-game series between the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics in Tokyo. It will be the second time we will have opened the season there -- the first was three years ago when we brought Sammy Sosa and the Cubs to Japan to play the New York Mets -- and the fourth time in five years that we've opened overseas. In 1999, we opened the season in Monterrey, Mexico, followed by Tokyo, and then San Juan, Puerto Rico in 2001. In recent years, we have also played spring training games outside the 50 United States with games in Venezuela, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and in a few days the Dodgers and Mets will play a spring training game in Mexico City. Also, Major League Baseball plays a major role in the selection and operation of the United States team at the Olympics. At the Sydney, Australia Games in 2000, a young team consisting mostly of minor leaguers and amateur players won the Gold Medal, thanks, in part, to the managing of Tommy Lasorda, a Hall-of-Famer who we hand-picked for the assignment.

We are aggressively marketing the game globally. We have begun plans to create a World Cup baseball tournament, along the lines of soccer's World Cup. Major League Baseball and the Players Association have been working very closely on this project and we expect to produce a tournament within a few years. Besides bringing in additional broadcast revenue, a World Cup of Baseball will result in more fans and greater respect for baseball within the world sporting community.

One area in which baseball never gets the credit it deserves is in the area of community involvement. I have always believed that baseball is a social institution with enormous social responsibilities. The clubs and most players are very active in their communities and give generously both their time and money to many different kinds of charities and community endeavors, most of which is done quietly and with little public fanfare. But baseball's connection to the community is much more than just giving, it is a long-term relationship. There are many examples of team and community involvement, but one of the most enduring is in Boston, where the Jimmy Fund and the Red Sox have teamed up to make the community a better place to live. Another excellent program is in San Francisco, where the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame named the Junior Giants Program the Community Program of the Year.

Baseball brings people together. It provides a window to escape from the tedium and difficulties of daily life; it gives people hope and faith, an opportunity to live vicariously through the "Boys of Summer." President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood what baseball meant to the public when he asked Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to continue the playing of the game during World War II. President Roosevelt wrote: "I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before."

That was more than 60 years ago, on January 15, 1942. Then twenty-five years later, the mayor of Detroit acknowledged that baseball -- more specifically, the Tigers -- played a significant role in helping to quell the racial riots that threatened to tear the city apart. All the Tigers did was play ball, but it was enough, as their games -- night after night -- diverted the attention of the people from the injustices they had to endure to the excitement that was taking place at Tiger Stadium in downtown Detroit.

Look at the Red Sox, the Cubs and the Cardinals. If you're from or live in New England, Chicago or St. Louis, you understand what those clubs mean to their communities. There is a loyalty and fervor among the fans of those clubs that has been passed down from generation to generation in a way that is truly unique. The enduring failures of the Red Sox and Cubs are treated with near religious fervor. Throughout New England, the "Curse of the Bambino" has become a sacred creed. In St. Louis, the color red is godly, and, on the north side of Chicago, Wrigley Field is referred to as the shrine.

But the most important development to take place in baseball during the 20th Century had enormous social significance. Many times I have said that Jackie Robinson's entry into the big leagues, thus ending the game's segregation, was baseball's proudest moment and its most powerful social statement. Fifty years after that historic event -- in April, 1997 -- I was especially proud to join Jackie's wife, Rachel, and President Bill Clinton at Shea Stadium in New York to remember Jackie and the history he made. That night, on behalf of Major League Baseball, it was my great honor to retire Jackie's Number 42 in perpetuity. It was the first time in any sport that such a gesture was bestowed on an athlete. It was a recognition that Jackie truly deserved, because his achievement not only pre-dated the integration of the United States Army and the Brown v. Board of Education decision, it arguably changed the course of our country's social history. Thanks to Jackie, baseball, for the first time, became our true national pastime.

Our game was also at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement in 1957. That fall, I had the privilege of being in the stands at County Stadium in Milwaukee when Hank Aaron of the Braves hit a home run to beat the St. Louis Cardinals to win the National League pennant. The next day, the New York Times published a report on its front page that juxtaposed the ironic contrast of white men carrying a black man off the field in Milwaukee with a photograph taken in Little Rock, Arkansas where white troops were battling black citizens with nightsticks.

More recently, I was especially proud of baseball's response to the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Our clubs resumed play at the appropriate time, and came back with the proper amount of sensitivity and patriotism. The clubs staged solemn ceremonies that paid tribute to the real heroes of 9/11 -- the fire fighters, police, and medical workers -- as well as to the innocent people who died on that tragic day. One of the most emotional moments came on September 17th, the day we resumed playing, when legendary announcer, the late Jack Buck, recited a wonderful and moving poem before a large crowd at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. As he finished with these words ...

Everyone is saying -- the same thing -- and praying That we end these senseless moments we are living As our fathers did before ... we shall win this unwanted war And our children ... will enjoy the future ... we'll be giving.

There wasn't a dry eye in the house. The players -- all of them -- handled the crisis with great dignity. The players on the New York teams and those that visited New York during the last few weeks of the season went out of their ways to honor those that served and visit those valiant workers at Ground Zero. And the Mets paid particular tribute to the heroes by wearing the caps of the rescue workers for the rest of the season. In our small way, baseball made an impact on the nation following 9/11 by creating a diversion and taking people's minds off the terrible realities of terrorism. Baseball was a factor in healing our nation's wounds.

Baseball is a great game. It is interwoven into the fabric of our country. When I was President of the Milwaukee Brewers, I would often travel around the state of Wisconsin giving a speech about hope and faith, about how on the first of April of each year it is our responsibility as the stewards of the game to assure that the fans of as many clubs as possible would have hope and faith in their club's ability to succeed. That is the essence of our great game, and it applies not only to the nature of the game, but to the marketing of it as well.

Thank you.