Rob Manfred wins election and is selected as new commissioner of baseball

Major League Baseball chief operating officer Rob Manfred will become the sport's next commissioner in 2015, Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times first reported Thursday evening. 

Manfred will be replacing current commissioner Bud Selig, who is retiring effective January 2015. The 55-year-old has been working with Selig for much of his tenure, since 1998 to be exact, and has worked closely with the MLB Player's Association, as he has been at the head of labor and CBA negotiations during the past two decades. He has attributed to much of the recent growth of revenue in baseball. 

Manfred defeated Tom Werner in the final vote that took place at the owner's meetings today. He is known to be more of a big-market person, as opposed to Werner, and did not receive support from the Blue Jays, Red Sox, White Sox, Nationals, Reds, Diamondbacks, Athletics, and Angels during the first few rounds of voting. He was one vote shy of the 23 votes (75 percent) needed to win. 

Once Manfred received the 23rd vote he needed to win commissioner, the seven teams followed by all voting in favor of him. It is unknown what team first changed their decision from Werner to Manfred, but we do know that the final vote was a 30-0 unanimous decision, even if the seven still not in favor changed their votes just for a formality of a unanimous decision. 

Manfred was the frontrunner for the position the entire way and it was only about time before the COO won the position of commissioner. Today, it became finalized, as Robert Manfred becomes the 10th commissioner of the sport of baseball. 

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