Budget directors cut back fiscal requests from departments and make sure commissioners don't try to spend more.

The commissioner frowned, tried to add that up, and sighed a second time.

The commissioner ordered his valet to race downstairs and try to trace the mystery call on another phone.

Emphatically, the commissioner tried to show Cranston where he was wrong.

"Basically the commissioner is trying to encourage teams to be fair," said one team executive, who asked not to be identified.

The commissioner is trying to realign funding and priorities to go with it.

The commissioner had been frantically trying to regain connection all this while.

The three American commissioners tried not to get discouraged.

Especially after the commissioner tried to take a moral stand.

Showing Fondelac's gun, which he had picked up from the floor, the commissioner tried to explain things.