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And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN Audio, the Ax Files, with your host, David Axelrod.

When Bud Sealig was 13, the future Commissioner of Baseball took a train from Milwaukee to Chicago to see the Cubs play the Brooklyn Dodgers, and Jackie Robinson's first appearance at Riggly Field.

Now as Major League Baseball makes history once again with its decision to move the All-Star game from Georgia in protest of its new voting laws, I sat down with Sealig to talk about baseball, the game, and the social institution. Here is that conversation.

But Sealig, it's good to see you. Are you the longest serving Commissioner? I know you and Kenisaw Mountain Landis.

That's about the game. Everybody wanted me, David, to stay another two months, I think, so that I eclipse Landis, who was the Commissioner in the early 20th century. So 23 years.

He took over in 1921 when the owners were in desperate shape because of the Blacksock scandal. And he got him to give him a lot of power, which was surprising.

And he used it well for a while, and then it's a whole another story.

But I'm just trying to establish your Bonafide as the gray eminence of baseball.

22 and a half years and within a month or two of Landis. Nobody else.

And one of the things that you often said was baseball was not just a game, it was a social institution.

We're well into that argument now because of the decision of baseball to move it all start game in reaction to the voting laws that were passed in Georgia that people many viewers voter suppression.

They would say otherwise, but it does draw baseball into politics.

Does that hurt the game? Or is it important to stand up for the larger principle, even if it does?

Right. I don't believe that it hurts the game. And I do. I used to say to Rob Manford, who served on a me for 23, 24 years or longer.

And succeeded you. Yes.

Yes. There are times in life where you have to do what you think is right.

If somebody's going to be mad and you got to get over that because you cannot do it because, wow, this guy will be mad or that guy will be mad.

And so in this particular case, look, Rob Manford did what he thought was right.

And do I think the game will get hurt by it? I know. I don't.

I have often said, and I believe it as you know, I'm now a professor and a history professor.

And I talk about social institution all the time.

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