Peter Ueberroth

Peter Victor Ueberroth (; born September 2, 1937) is an American sports and business executive known for his involvement in the Olympics and in Major League Baseball. A Los Angeles–based businessman, he was the chairman of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee which brought the games to Los Angeles in 1984. Ueberroth was named 1984's Time Man of the Year for his success in organizing the Olympic Games, and was also named The Sporting News Sportsman of the Year.

After the conclusion of the games, he was named as the sixth commissioner of baseball, a role he held from 1984 to 1989. He later served as the chairman of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee from 2004 to 2008.

Ueberroth was born in Evanston, Illinois, the son of Laura (Larson) and Victor Ueberroth. His father was of German and Austrian descent, and his mother was of Swedish and Irish ancestry. He caddied at Sunset Ridge Country Club, in Northfield, Illinois. He grew up in Northern California. While attending Fremont High School, Ueberroth excelled in football, baseball, and swimming. After graduating from high school, Ueberroth attended San Jose State University on an athletic scholarship. While attending San Jose State he joined Delta Upsilon. He competed in the 1956 United States Olympic water polo trials but failed to make the team. Ueberroth ultimately graduated from San Jose State in 1959 with a degree in business.

After college, Ueberroth became a vice president and shareholder in Trans International Airlines (he was 22 years old at the time), then owned by future billionaire Kirk Kerkorian. Ueberroth worked at Trans International until 1963, when he founded his own travel company, which would become First Travel Corporation. By the time he sold First Travel in 1980, it was the second largest travel business in North America.

After Los Angeles was awarded the 1984 Summer Olympics in 1978, management consulting firm Korn Ferry was tasked with finding a president for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. Ueberroth was one of over 200 people approached for the role; other prominent candidates included Curt Gowdy, Alexander Haig, Lee Iacocca, and Pete Rozelle. Ueberroth later wrote that he was initially reluctant to apply for the job, but eventually agreed to meet with LAOOC board members one-on-one. In the first of these meetings, he wrote, Justin Dart declared that he did not want to meet any other candidates. Ueberroth's primary competitor for the position was Edwin Steidle, the chairman of May Company California. When the LAOOC board put the matter to a final vote on March 26, 1979, a two-week delay was requested to allow Steidle to negotiate the terms of his exit from May. With 17 of the 22 members present, the board voted 9–8 to deny the request, effectively making Ueberroth the only candidate. Rafer Johnson, who later lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony, was reportedly the deciding vote. Ueberroth was then chosen unanimously.

Ueberroth remained in the role for the next five years, serving until after the Olympics were over. At the LAOOC's peak, Ueberroth and his second-in-command Harry Usher were responsible for managing 70,000 employees and volunteers. Ueberroth received the Olympic Order in gold from the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Due to the success of the games, he was named Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1984. Organizing the first privately financed Olympic Games in history, Ueberroth and Usher were credited with successfully keeping operational costs low while attracting over $600 million in sponsorship and broadcasting revenues. This resulted in a surplus of nearly $250 million, which was subsequently used to support youth and sports activities throughout the United States. The privately run Olympics became the model for future Games, and Ueberroth's aggressive recruiting of sponsors for the 1984 Olympics is credited as the genesis for the current Olympic sponsorship program. Due to recruiting competitors between the Los Angeles Olympic Committee and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), after 1984 all Olympics in the US had their local organizing committees enter into recruitment agreements with the USOC to jointly recruit sponsors and share revenue. Coincidentally, he was born on the day on which the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, died.

Ueberroth was elected to succeed Bowie Kuhn on March 3, 1984, and took office on October 1 of that year. As a condition of his hiring, Ueberroth increased the commissioner's fining ability from US$5,000 to $250,000. His salary was raised to a reported $450,000, nearly twice what Kuhn was paid.

Just as Ueberroth was taking office, the Major League Umpires Union was threatening to strike the postseason. Ueberroth managed to arbitrate the disagreement and had the umpires back to work before the League Championship Series were over. The next summer, Ueberroth worked behind the scenes to limit a players' strike to one day before a new labor agreement was worked out with the Players Association.

During the course of his stint as commissioner, Ueberroth reinstated two Hall of Famers, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, who had been banned from working for Major League Baseball by Kuhn because of their associations with gambling casinos. Also, Ueberroth suspended numerous players because of cocaine use, negotiated a $1.8 billion television contract with CBS, and initiated the investigation against Pete Rose's betting habits. In 1985, Ueberroth's first full year in office, the League Championship Series expanded from a best-of-five series to a best-of-seven series. At his urging, the Chicago Cubs chose to install lights at Wrigley Field rather than reimburse the leagues for lost night-game revenue. Ueberroth then found a new source of income in the form of persuading large corporations to pay for the privilege of having their products endorsed by MLB.

Ueberroth was a corporate director of The Coca-Cola Company from 1986 until his retirement in 2015. Ueberroth is an investor and chairman of the Contrarian Group, Inc., a business management company, and has held this position since 1989. He is also co-chairman of Pebble Beach Company. He is a director of Hilton Hotels Corp. and previously served as director of Adecco S.A. from 2004 to 2008. He has served as Chairman of the Board of Aircastle since 2012 and been on the board since 2006.

In 1989, Ueberroth considered purchasing Eastern Air Lines, then crippled by a strike and bankruptcy from Texas Air. However, a management dispute with Texas Air CEO Frank Lorenzo led to the deal falling through.

In 1990, Ueberroth bought controlling interest of Hawaiian Airlines with his brother John and business partner J. Thomas Talbot.

Three years after leaving office, he led the Rebuild Los Angeles project after the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

During the 1992 United States presidential election, independent candidate Ross Perot "liked him the best" out of a list of potential running mates. However, while Ueberroth was interested, the campaign staff felt he was too unknown in politics to be the vice-presidential nominee.

Ueberroth married Virginia "Ginny" Nicolaus in 1959, and they have four children.