Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig's time
has come and gone. (AP/Gene J. Puskar, File)
What we have here is complete breakdown of a major sport, from the commissioner to the union to the players and even clubhouse attendants. Major League Baseball has put the fun in dysfunction but not is a ha-ha way.
I now cringe when I open my mail box for fear there will be something new that tears at the fabric of this once great game. It is the time of year where we should be abuzz with talk of the Phillies repeating or the Rays proving 2008 was not a fluke.
There should be chatter about the Yankees’ spending spree or if the Mets will steal all the headlines in the Big Apple, if and when Manny Ramirez will sign or if Brian Fuentes is the Angels’ bullpen solution after losing Francisco Rodriguez and his 62-saves to free agency.
When the final out was recorded at the World Series we knew it was going to be a rocky off-season road with Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens still dominating the headlines with charges of perjury and defamation. We also knew the Hot Stove League would sunami the bad because there was oh so much good that would force those stories off the back pages or page one of sports sections.
Single season and career marks are tainted beyond comprehension with the stigma of “The Steroid Era” forever hanging over the record book. But there was hope. A single standout individual was supposed to single-handedly lead us out of the wilderness just as Babe Ruth saved baseball from extinction following the Black Sox. His name was Alex Rodriguez.
So much for the best laid plans.
A-Rod, better known as A-Fraud to his friends inside the Yankees’ clubhouse, will be buried under an avalanche of A-Roid signs when he visits cities away from New York. In fact, there is no guarantee the home fans will forgive and forget the way they did with Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte. The love-hate, mostly hate, relationship Rodriguez has with them makes that the biggest question mark of all.
His divorce and Madonna chasing aside, Rodriguez was the best player in the game. Love him or loathe him, you cannot ignore the stats. But what is to happen now that he has been exposed as a cheat? What do we make of the numbers now?
Bud Selig said Rodriguez “shamed the game.” I am still chuckling at that one but it annoys me at the same time because it is so hypocritical. The A-Rod “Sermon on the Mount” comes after years of ignoring the huge growth of the sport, and I am not talking about ticket sales either. Selig even intimated that the record book could be adjusted but that is about a brilliant idea as an All Star Game tie then making that exhibition the end all, be all for home field advantage in the World Series.
Heck, they can’t even get seedings right for the playoffs so that begins to tell the story about where Selig and his cohort’s heads are. One plays four unless four is in the same division as one. Then one plays three and two against four. Or is it the fifth best waits for a rainout and takes the place of three? Did they factor in a full moon? Who writes this stuff?
Selig’s time has come and gone but he will continue to collect his $17.5 million salary because he is a member of the owner’s fraternity. Can you say “Job for life?”
Then we have what is considered the strongest union on the planet. It is alleged they illegally tipped off Rodriguez to an impending drug test and they will ultimately have to answer for that transgression. However, they had the chance to be Nixononian and make the 2003 “anonymous” testing vanish like the 18-minutes of blank tape. And it would have been legal to do so.
They didn’t and now baseball is on the hook for another scandal. Had the Players’ Association destroyed the evidence, only Rodriguez and a select few within the union would have had a clue. With the results gone we can only speculate whether the story would have ever seen the light of day unless there was a Jose Canseco wanna-be inside the union.
Finally, we have Rodriguez. The man who told Katie Couric he never, ever used anything illegal and was shown to be a liar by his own admission. Now a liar and a cheat, A-Rod could not just apologize to Peter Gammons of ESPN. He attempted to throw the author of the story, Selena Roberts, under the bus as being a stalker, amongst other things, each and every claim refuted by her.
What Roberts did was investigative journalism, possibly two words not in the third-baseman’s vocabulary.
One thing is not clear. Rodriguez readily admits using performance enhancers during his stay with the Rangers. Fine, but the public mea culpa does not clear him of using at any other time during his career especially in light of the warning the union allegedly gave him. Did they do it more than once? Is baseball itself culpable in a cover-up because he had the terrific personality and boyish looks the hated Barry Bonds lacked?
Were we all sold a bill of goods before Rodriguez was outed? Who knew and when did they know it? This reeks and leaves many of us with nothing more to believe in.
Baseball in my house has always been religion. From my youth when my Baseball Encyclopedia was the back of a bubble gum card, I passed on stories and stats to my kids. They are like their father in a baseball sense but I wonder what they think now?
No other sport is talked about with such reverence to records. Who has the most goals in the NHL? Who threw the most TDs in the NFL? Other than Wild Chamberlain’s 100-point game, name one other NBA record. Only the die-hards can quote chapter and verse. Baseball is about numbers, always has, but now I don’t know.
The biggest names in the game are being shown as crooks because they stole the game, the record book and the fan’s money. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Miguel Tejada, Roger Clemens and now Alex Rodriguez have made baseball into Humpty Dumpty and all the clean players cannot put the record book back together again. Not even Selig.
From a personal standpoint I want Bud Selig’s head on a platter. I want Donald Fehr roasted on a pit. I want the aforementioned players tried and sent to jail. Lastly, for every positive test for a PED herein, Major League Baseball should banish that person for life. Period. No second chances. You cheat, find another line of work.
And to think Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson are thought of as pariahs. My God, what has this game come to?
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Comments
There haven't been "clean" players since... ever. Hall of Fame pitcher Pud Galvin extended his career by injecting himself with testosterone from goat testes. Willie Mays - and the great majority of post-WWII players - achieved their records with the help of the most proven performance enhancing drug in the world, amphetamines. Cheating has been a way of life in baseball since professional baseball began; it has never been a "gentleman's sport" like golf. The real scandals here are that it took 60 years for anyone to notice how rampant ped use is in baseball, and how everybody is treating the current generation as if they are different from the previous generations who loaded up with the peds that were available then.
"Single season and career marks are tainted beyond comprehension . . ." No, they aren't. I do wish that people who are supposed to be professional reporters would actually report something besides the insides of their own heads. Almost everything taken as axiomatic about PEDs is based on zero homework into the subject. Google up "Steroids, Other 'Drugs', and Baseball" or any of the several other web sites and blogs doing real analysis of baseball before pontificating. Or get elected to Congress.
Let's see, Babe Ruth did it on hot dogs and beer, Roger Maris' only sin was he played in 162 games, Henry Aaron belted homers in "The Launchin Pad." Yeah, I am sure those records are tainted.
My "pontificating" comes from growing up in an era where the biggest worry was having players showing up hung over and popping a few pep-pills. And I don't recall the early days where there were any banned substances - BY LAW - such as steroids and the like.
Records are tainted beyond comprehension as I stated because none are believable any more. This is not an issue of cocaine or alcohol where it could be labled an addiction, just as amphetamines. Steroids, the Clear and other such PEDs are not in that category thereby anyone who used did so with the intent of stealing from the game.
I can and will forgive anyone with an addiction to get their life in order and gain a second or even a third chance. I hold no such forgiveness for the likes of Bonds and Rodriguez.
Sorry. Just an opinion.
Get off your high horses people! Regardless these "tainted" stats still counted in a game. So should we not count those games too? Just erase everything and start over? 80% of MLB players were on PED's. "Greenies", Ripped Fuel, Andro, HGH. Half of which were legal at the time. Hell let them take the energy stuff. These guys play everyday! I want to see guys healthy and happy.
Great stuff Ted. It truly is a different era.
Paula, thanks. My biggest problem is with those who believe that cheating is OK and Selig did nothing wrong because fans are flocking to the ballyards. He is nothing but a used car salesman who caters only to the owners.
What is more annoying is Selig claims he tried to get a steroid policy in place as far back as 1995. The more I listen to this boob the more I think he is certifiable.
IF the commish was so intent on ridding the sport of this potential headache, why wasn't he screaming from the rooftops? Why didn't he enlist the help of elected officials instead of waiting to be called on the carpet a decade later?
Selig is supposed to protect this game. All he has done is line the pockets of his fellow owners then threw players under the bus once Congress got involved like they were the ONLY bad guys.
The A-Rod saga is another indication of Selig's inability to deal with reality as if he was the poster child for steroids and PEDs. A-Rod is only one small part of the entire problem that should have been headed off before it happened.
Baseball has NEVER been proactive with anything. It's like a city waiting for someone to get killed at a corner before they put up a traffic light.
It makes me sick because this is not the game I grew up loving.
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