Many in baseball echo Eckersley. Although Bud Selig is a nicer guy than his detractors allow -- many depict him wearing horns, a pitchfork and a tail -- there is no denying baseball has lived through some tough times under his watch, most notably the tragic 1994 strike, which truncated the season and canceled the World Series.

Anybody waiting for a sign that things had changed got one in August, when Alderson handled the umps' ultimatum like the nerves-of-steel veteran he is. You did not have to be a Alderson admirer to enjoy his quote on the July day when Phillips incited his umpires to resign.

"This is either a threat to be ignored, or an offer to be accepted," Alderson told reporters. You knew right there the fight was over before it started.

Alderson combines self-control with the passion of someone who truly loves baseball. Despite his self-discipline, he has been known to blow up at times, as I discovered first-hand over the years I covered his team for the San Francisco Chronicle. He also has a sense of humor so sharp, and occasionally so cutting, that when it strikes, people don't know what hit them.

"It's one of those senses of humor that's so sharp, you're laughing even as your head is tottering because he's cut it right off of you," said San Francisco Examiner writer and columnist Edvins Beitiks, a former A's beat writer. "To think that there are people who believe they are sharper than he is just makes me want to fall over and grab my sides."

He also inspires a fierce loyalty. A's manager Tony LaRussa let loose with one of the best tirades in baseball history when one of his players, the clueless Ruben Sierra, made the mistake of saying he would like to see Alderson step into the batter's box and have a 90-mile-an-hour fastball thrown his way. La Russa reamed Sierra memorably:

"Every time he opens his mouth he makes a fool of himself," La Russa said. "There's a term players use, V.I., when a player starts believing fantasy. He's a village idiot ... Sandy has put together some winning ballclubs. And then you have a guy like Ruben who has yet to win his first ring. The arrogance. He's got to be an idiot. The more I think about it, the madder I get ... In this one case I'm going to say how full of shit he really is. He gets on Sandy because he never played. Here's a guy who went to Vietnam. If Ruben ever went to Vietnam, he'd alternate between vomiting and shitting his pants. He's trying to intimidate a guy who did two or three tours in Vietnam."

Alderson, of course, does not intimidate. During a pickup basketball game with sports reporters a few springs back, Mike DiGiovanna of the L.A. Times muttered to a teammate, "Easy, soldier." The comment was not directed at Alderson, but even so, the next time down the court, Alderson bent his knees, planted his feet squarely and set a pick that sent DiGiovanna flying into the wall of the small gym.

"I didn't think he was talking to me, but I wanted to be sure," Alderson said afterward, laughing along with everyone else.

The last time I saw Alderson, he had the look of a victorious general, as he sat down for a meal last March at a fashionable Havana restaurant full of stunning young Cuban women paired off with middle-aged European businessmen. Alderson was enjoying himself as part of the delegation that brought big-league ballplayers to Cuba for the first time in decades.

But there was more going on than just that. Alderson loves a good fight, and he knew he had one brewing with the out-of-control umpires' union. He also seemed to have a clue just how fun -- and easy -- the battle was going to be.

In a recent phone interview, he expressed some surprise at the acclaim his handling of the umpires' showdown brought him, and laughed off the notion he knew how it would end. "The degree to which it generated coverage was surprising to me, but it probably shouldn't have been," he said. "It wasn't clear where it was heading in mid-July. The commissioner's intent was clear, and what we hoped to accomplish was centralization of umpires. But the means by which we got there certainly wasn't. It was a surprising series of events."

Alderson hopes to come up with some creative ideas to help make a difference. Nothing has grated on ballplayers and fans in recent years more than the day-to-day and ump-to-ump variations in the strike zone. Baseball tried directing the umpires to call the rulebook strike zone -- basically from the armpits to the bottom of the knees -- and met with limited success. Now it may try developing a kind of virtual-reality simulator that umpires can use to sharpen their abilities.

"Their response has been mixed," he said. "I think when people understand that this would be used for training and not for evaluation, then we get a much better response."

And he had this message for the umpires themselves, some of whom left the field teary-eyed toward the end of the season when their careers ended because of Phillips' offer: "What I've told umpires, when I've had the opportunity, is we want to make them the most respected group of officials in any sport, professional or amateur, in the world," he said. "They may be very good at what they do, but they are not perceived that way. There are some great umpires. In fact, most are very good. To some degree, to change perceptions, you have to change reality. That's what we will try to accomplish."

Asked about the state of baseball, Alderson brought up one of the biggest problems facing the game right now -- the declining participation of African-American players on the field, and their continued low representation in management. Baseball has been criticized not just for ignoring black coaches and managers, but for failing to develop homegrown African-American baseball talent -- not putting the resources into domestic scouting and recruiting that it does in Latin America, for instance. ESPN sportscaster and former player Joe Morgan and others have urged baseball to put some money into a baseball academy for inner-city kids, one that could produce as many future big-leaguers as similar facilities in the Dominican Republic.

"We're talking about creating new programs," Alderson said. "In the international area, what we're doing is convincing the clubs that it's an important part of the future. And I think we need to make sure we're developing quality players from within the United States as energetically as we are outside the United States. I'm very interested in making sure that baseball is appealing to diverse people over the next few years, making sure that we reflect that in our organizational and management structure."

Clearly, baseball needed Alderson, and he needed the challenge of moving up. As general manager and then president of the Oakland A's, Alderson had gone from crafty genius to canny card player stuck with a bad hand. The clever moves that made the A's World Series champs back in 1989 were becoming ancient history. No one remembers him as the man who in 1997 traded away Mark McGwire to St. Louis for three guys you've probably never heard of, but he did in fact pull the trigger on that deal.

Not that it matters now. Alderson's success as the behind-the-scenes creative presence in the standoff with the umpires does more than ratify his new influence and give baseball's short-term prospects a much-needed boost. It makes it reasonable to project that Alderson could eventually become commissioner -- although Selig will probably stay where he is for at least a few years, and no one in power will touch the topic of Alderson's possible ascension.

"Sandy is an exceptional fellow in a variety of ways," said Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos. "I wouldn't say that he shouldn't aspire to such a position, but that's more of a political question. I certainly hope Bud will be around as commissioner for quite a while."

Alderson himself deflects such speculation -- although it's noteworthy that a man who uses language with precision chooses the term "stance" in describing his reaction to such talk: "My stance is I enjoy what I'm doing right now," he said. "I enjoy working for Bud and enjoy the people I work with here. And I have no expectations beyond that. I'm a little uncomfortable when people start talking about that."