Selig long ago established himself as purely an owners' guy rather than an objective advocate for the game. That won't change, and neither will the painfully obvious conflicts of interest that mark his tenure from the day he took the job to the moment he resigns.

But he also became an object of ridicule, and that won't do. He'll never be the bloodless Leviathan Paul Tagliabue or the avuncular python David Stern, but he bumped into so many walls and missed so many opportunities to separate the business from the game that his public image is only slightly better now in the afterglow of settlement than it was a week ago, when he shared Most Villainous Performer honors with union leader Don Fehr.

So now that not-war has broken out, Selig has yet one more opportunity to re-spackle his image and that of the game he tries in his way to defend so passionately.

How he does that may be the most interesting off-field development between now and the next spit-fest in 2006.

He is at his worst when defending ownership prerogatives, and at his best when trying to show that the game itself has a properly large place in the American psyche. That is where his energy should be applied now, rather than spending so much time on the phone working this owner and schmoozing that one. He has been the commissioner of 29 rich owners and one daughter long enough, and to the extent that people care about Selig's legacy want to see him expand his interests away from his desk and phone.

Can he do it? Well, he hasn't yet, and he's been on the job for nearly a decade. He is 68, and 68-year-olds do not, as a general rule, show a lot of flexibility.

But he has to. He doesn't have a choice. If he intends to separate himself in the public's mind from Don Fehr and strikes and lockouts and protracted ugly negotiations and being dismissed as a double-talking cluck by such luminaries as Maxine Waters and Jesse Ventura, he has to act like everyone's advocate for a change, and not just his ownership contemporaries.

And in this post-no-strike euphoria, Selig has a chance that most people don't get -- a fourth swing.

If he takes the opportunity seriously, recognizes that baseball's healing has to work from the inside out and stops being an owners' guy for awhile, he could make for himself the legacy he says he has always wanted.

If he misses it, then there'll be more go-rounds with Fehr and Waters and Ventura and media wise-asses who see the outside more clearly than he does while seeing less of the inside than he knows. That can't be what he wants. It can't be. The man can't be that much of a masochist.

Can he?

Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor for ESPN.com