Several years ago Pete Rose applied for reinstatement from his lifetime ban for betting on baseball and still awaits word from Commissioner Bud Selig.

“Pete Rose wants to come back to baseball; Bud doesn’t want to make a decision,” said a lawyer who has worked with Selig and knows him well. “Bud doesn’t want to make decisions.”

This was not a discussion about Pete Rose; it was about the absence of a decision by Selig on the Oakland Athletics’ request to be allowed to move to San Jose.

It is Selig’s procrastination that has inflicted a federal lawsuit on him and Major League Baseball. The word procrastination, however, suggests that someday a decision will be forthcoming. In this instance, who knows? As the lawyer said, “Bud doesn’t want to make decisions.”

If he doesn’t make a controversial decision, which a San Jose decision would be, Selig figures he can’t get anyone mad at him, and he doesn’t like anyone getting mad at him.

The San Jose City Council, on the other hand, can only anger Selig with its lawsuit charging him with violating the Sherman antitrust act, tortuous interference with prospective economic advantage and with contractual advantage and violating some California state laws.

“It’s an exciting case,” said Anne Marie Murphy, one of San Jose’s lawyers, “because we think this is an issue that could go all the way to the Supreme Court.”

If that were to happen, the case would be decided after Selig leaves office, which he is scheduled to do after next season.

Selig has not commented on the suit, but Rob Manfred, executive vice president and one of the candidates to succeed Selig, said in a statement, “In considering the issues related to the Oakland Athletics, Major League Baseball has acted in the best interests of our fans, our communities and the league. The lawsuit is an unfounded attack on the fundamental structures of a professional sports league. It is regrettable that the city has resorted to litigation that has no basis in law or in fact.”

The city, however, would not have taken this step had Selig acted in a more timely and reasonable manner. It’s not my job to tell Selig how to do his job – he is paid about $25 million a year to do it – but how can it possibly take his Bay Area study committee more than four years to do its job?

Any time Selig is asked about the issue, he says the committee is working on it. “It’s a complex situation,” he has said repeatedly.

Earlier this year he also refused to meet with the mayor of San Jose, telling him to talk to the committee.

What’s a disrespected city to do? The San Jose council members did it. They sued.

Lew Wolff, the team owner and long-ago college classmate of Selig, has stayed out of the legal dispute. “I have no details,” he said in a brief telephone conversation. “I’m not in favor of legal action or legal threats to solve business issues.”

A businessman close to Wolff said that in 60 years in business he has probably been involved in two lawsuits.

San Jose’s legal action, Murphy said, is two-pronged: “It alleges violations of state and United States antitrust laws. It also alleges interference with contractual relations under state law stemming from an agreement between the Athletics and San Jose. Major League Baseball is interfering with the performance of that contract.

As a proponent of the Athletics’ effort to move to San Jose, I would like to see the city win the suit, but I am skeptical that that outcome can be achieved. The suit asks the court to strike down baseball’s 91-year exemption from the antitrust laws.

The United States Supreme Court has declined to do that more than once, and the conservative court doesn’t seem to be the one to change that history. Times have changed since the original court decision in 1922, in which the court found that Major League Baseball was not engaged in interstate commerce, and maybe Murphy and her colleagues at Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy can capitalize on the changes.

There may be a way for the federal district court to rule for San Jose without disturbing baseball’s antitrust exemption.

One of the pivotal issues in the dispute is the status of Santa Clara County, in which San Jose is located. The San Francisco Giants claim Santa Clara County as part of its territory. That is constitutionally true as far as MLB is concerned.

However, before 1990, the Giants shared the county with the Athletics, just as the Yankees and the Mets share territory in the New York area. The sharing ended at an owners meeting June 14, 1990, when the owners voted unanimously to give the territory entirely to the Giants.

Even Walter Haas Jr., the A’s owner, voted to give the Giants Santa Clara. He did that because it was his idea.

The Giants were having trouble at windy, cold Candlestick Park in San Francisco, and owner Bob Lurie wanted to move the team to the city Santa Clara. San Jose was not as developed or populated as it is today. But he needed Haas’s ok to make the move. Haas gave it to him, not even asking for a utility infielder in return.

“He was a gentleman,” said Fay Vincent, who was the baseball commissioner at the time. “He realized Lurie was struggling and wanted to help him.”

Vincent is not the only person who has confirmed the Haas story. Bud Selig, the current commissioner, who was the Milwaukee Brewers’ owner then, has acknowledged the story, too. “I know the story,” he has said. “I was there.”

Sandy Alderson, the Mets’ general manager, was the A’s general manager in 1990 and attended the Cleveland meeting.

“There was never any intention to give the Giants rights to the territory other than allowing them to move there,” Alderson said in a March 2011 telephone interview. “I think Walter’s probable thinking was if they moved it would be better for us. But it was more altruistic on Walter’s part to allow them to move there.”

The Giants never moved to Santa Clara, whose voters defeated a stadium referendum, but a subsequent owner built a privately funded park in San Francisco. Nothing, though, was done to restore Santa Clara County to a shared status.

The Giants have stubbornly clung to the county, saying Santa Clara is essential to its economic well-being. They even deny the Haas story, though I don’t know what Larry Baer, president and CEO, thinks because he doesn’t return telephone calls.

A couple of years ago I talked to William Neukom, then the managing partner, and asked him about the Haas story. He called it “an urban myth.”

But here’s my idea. In the event the San Jose lawyers are falling short in their effort to convince the jury – they have demanded a jury trial – that MLB should not be exempt from the antitrust laws, they can use the Haas story to regain at the least a shared status for Santa Clara County.

Picture this scenario: Selig on the witness stand testifying to the veracity of the Haas story, the commissioner, in effect, telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth against his own self-interest. It would be a great finale for the commissioner.

With Selig relating the events of the 1990 meeting, the jury couldn’t help but find for San Jose on that narrow issue. Antitrust violations would not be an issue, and the jury would be only too happy to find the A’s way to San Jose.

With the Giants faced with a stalemate over what they could do in Santa Clara County, the A’s could negotiate a deal allowing them to build a stadium in San Jose, and everyone could live happily ever after.