Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball and a UW-Madison alumnus, told students Monday his history degree helped him achieve success in sports management.

History Department Chair Professor David McDonald introduced Selig as the department’s “most prominent and certainly our most visible alumnus.”

Selig graduated from UW-Madison with a history degree in 1956. As an undergraduate student with a deep love for baseball, Selig said he dreamed of someday becoming a history professor.

“When I was a kid walking around here … little did I ever dream that I was gonna wind up being the ninth commissioner of baseball,” Selig said. “But I believe that amongst other things my education played a great role in it all.”

After graduation, Selig joined his family business and “through an incredible series of events,” worked his way to becoming the president of the Milwaukee Brewers in 1995 and eventually commissioner of baseball in 1998.

Selig spoke highly of the education he received at UW-Madison. He said a history degree “prepares you better for what is to come than anything” he could think of.

“History helps me to understand not only what the situation is, but why it is,” he said. “The fact that I was a history major with a mind like this trained [me] to try to understand the genesis of any problem that has confronted me. What could I have taken that gave me a better education?”

He further emphasized how every problem and situation in life, including those confronted in baseball, are rooted in history.

While Selig spoke of his position as “a very difficult job with a significant amount of controversies,” he stressed that it is impossible to understand the sport of baseball unless one can understand its history.

“Whatever it is, understanding the past is the way to solve your problems of the present and the future,” Selig said. “And I really would like to make that point to you over and over.”

Selig was the first speaker of the ongoing history department series “What Can You Do With A History Major.”