It was 60 degrees Monday midday in Scottsdale, so Bud Selig, a few hours after his daily tromp on a stationary bike, was out for a walk. He had a telephone to his ear, and near the end of a 40-minute conversation his breath was coming a bit louder, though he assured his caller he was only getting started.

He is 81 years old, almost a year into retirement. He does what he wants, pretty much when he wants, which is how retirement ought to work. For the near future, that means the Alabama-Clemson football game on Monday night outside Phoenix, and Dennis Gilbert's Baseball Scouts Foundation dinner Saturday night in Los Angeles (he's presenting an award in his name to Joe Torre), and maybe another few words on paper toward the writing of his memoir.

For years a keen collector of art, he pursues that distraction with more vigor. He talks to Rob Manfred, his successor as baseball commissioner, when Manfred calls, and delights in saying what a fine job Manfred has done since he himself cleared out. A new labor negotiation is coming, three players are testing the league's new domestic violence policy, there's a computer hacking scandal in St. Louis and that's just the big stuff and that's just today, and Selig says, "Mmmm-hmmm," and that's about all.

"I'm reticent to talk about it," he says. "The world is changing."

He chuckles.

"But, from 1992 on" – the start of his tenure on Park Avenue – "the world was changing," he says. "I have every confidence, whatever the subject, that Rob will deal with it objectively and sensitively."

That's all on someone else's desk today, which is to say Selig has a curiosity for and a rooting interest in the outcome, and also other things to do. For six years he's taught a class in sports law at Marquette. And since the fall he's been a history teacher, what he'd wanted to be before that baseball team needed saving and relocating, before life chose for him otherwise and he went along. The class is called "Baseball and American Society since World War II," which concluded in mid-December with a bus trip to Milwaukee and a tour of The Selig Experience, the museum at Miller Park.

"I'm doing very well," he says when he answers his phone. "I love my teaching."

First thing he says. Then, what he wants to talk about, the Tuesday afternoons he spent with 18 students, the conversations carried from required reading on Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood and, of course, Jim Bouton, and all the questions those raised. They talked labor relations. They talked steroids. They asked what Commissioner Selig thought about all that and whatever was in the headlines that morning.

"They worry about the economics, as I think everybody does," he says. "But their love of the game really came through. I'm exhilarated every time I leave."

Another semester starts next week. He can hardly wait.

He's asked about this year away, or at least on the periphery, and his answer suggests he's not actually that far away.

"What was different about the year?" he says. "I don't know that it's different. A lot of people are amazed the transition has been so seamless."

Meaning not Selig to art galleries and lecture halls, but Selig to Manfred. It's still about the game in many ways. A man may walk away from a half-century's passion, from the building and the desk in it, but perhaps not from the responsibility of tending to it and loving it.

He waits for the questions from young men and women who couldn't have seen the great Aaron, who might barely comprehend Bonds, and probably have only seen the game strong and healthy. It got here somehow, and the man standing before them did have something to do with that, and now their curiosity for those bygone days are matched only by his joy for reliving them.

"So," he says, "I am delighted."

He'd get on a plane Tuesday bound for Milwaukee and home, he says, and then Friday to Los Angeles, not, he grants, the schedule for a retiree. There is plenty that remains important to him, of course, beginning with the game, and then honoring those in it. A night beside his old friend Joe Torre ranks with it. Gilbert has raised $1.6 million in just more than a decade for scouts in financial need, and Selig honors that along with the men who have their stories to tell.

"Take care," he says, puts away his phone, and continues on. Just getting started.