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Brewers to build Bud Selig exhibit

MILWAUKEE -- The Milwaukee Brewers will honor outgoing baseball commissioner Bud Selig with an interactive exhibit at Miller Park.

The "Selig Experience" in the left-field corner of the loge level is to include include a 3-D multimedia presentation and a replica of Selig's paper-cluttered County Stadium office.

The 80-year-old Selig helped bring Major League Baseball back to Milwaukee when he led the group that bought the expansion Seattle Pilots in bankruptcy court and moved the team to Wisconsin before the 1970 season.

Selig took over running MLB as chairman of the executive council in 1992 after helping force Commissioner Fay Vincent's resignation, was elected commissioner in July 1998 and is retiring on Jan. 25, when Rob Manfred takes over.

Selig's family controlled the Brewers until selling the team to Mark Attanasio in 2005. Under the Selig family, the team moved from County Stadium into newly built Miller Park in 2001.

"This means a great deal to me," Selig said at a news conference Monday. "It's been wonderful, and I've got a lot of things coming up in the next month in terms of honors and things, but this means -- I can't describe to you how much this means to me."

Brewers chief operating officer Rick Schlesinger said he came up with the area when he and his son visited the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. Schlesinger said a Google search turned up BRC Imagination Arts as the firm that performed multimedia work for the museum.

"It's not very often someone calls and says, 'I want to make a hologram of Bud Selig,' " said Brad Shelton, BRC's creative director. The firm also has worked for Olympics and museums.

Selig said he was grateful the exhibit will focus on efforts to get a team for Milwaukee following the departure of the Braves for Atlanta following the 1965 season. During that time, Selig persuaded the Chicago White Sox to schedule nine home games at County Stadium in 1968 and 11 more the following year.

"I've done a lot philosophizing," Selig said. "What if I had failed? None of us would be here today, none of this would have ever happened."