In recent weeks several people have asked me if I thought Bud Selig would really retire when his term as commissioner expires after the 2012 season. Always feeling certain that he would not retire, I replied that by the start of spring training Major League Baseball would announce a contract extension for Selig.

This qualifies as coming before spring training so the owners, meeting my expected timetable as they held their quarterly meetings in Arizona this week, asked Selig to stay on as commissioner for two more years through the 2014 season.

With a salary of at least $22 million a year and use of a private jet, how could he say no? He’d rather write a book and teach history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison? Not in this lifetime.

This column wasn’t going to be about Bud Selig so that’s all I will say about him.

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When I left The New York Times in 2008 after having written for the newspaper for 39 years, the first offer I received to continue writing came from a high-ranking Major League Baseball official who was in position to offer me a job as a columnist with MLB.com. My initial reaction was to say no, but some people urged me to reconsider and at least talk about and consider that possibility.

Accepting that offer would have turned out to be more economically lucrative than what I have done with this Web site the past three and a half years. But money isn’t everything. Writing for MLB.com just didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

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Commissioners of professional sports leagues generally make decisions and stick to them. They don’t acknowledge making mistakes, and they don’t change their decisions. It’s not that Bud Selig made a mistake with one of his hires, but Joe Torre, the man he hired nearly a year ago for the highest-ranking baseball position in his office, has unexpectedly given the commissioner a chance to get it right.

Torre resigned Wednesday as executive vice president for baseball operations. He had to resign because he has joined one of the groups that want to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team Torre recently managed for three years.

What is the second chance that Torre’s resignation gives Selig to get it right?

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