Sunday, April 08, 2007

Jerry Green

Selig cleans up while game faces another untidy moment

The most overpaid man in baseball never reached first base. He never struck out nor left a runner marooned on third. But he sure is a cleanup man.

He is the baseball contributor who canceled a World Series and turned an All-Star Game into a farce. He is responsible for the most dangerous baseball scandal in generations. And he is unable to make up his mind about the most important event that is likely to occur in this baseball season.

His name is Bud Selig. And he is the lord high commissioner of Major League Baseball. His wages for the last fiscal year amounted to $14.5 million, according to Sports Business Journal.

That, for sure, is cleaning up.

Of course, Bud is not yet in the salary bracket of Barry Bonds. And in firm action, his office did sanction the contract that guarantees Bonds $15.8 million this season.

Now, as Bonds creeps toward Henry Aaron's lifetime home run record, Bud continues his hemming and hawing about whether he intends to grace the record-breaking with his attendance.

For $14.5 million, most of us would be able to make up our minds and make a definitive statement.

Aaron's record, 755 home runs, is doomed. It should be gone by midsummer. Bud is helpless to prevent it.

But will he recognize Bonds as the record breaker? Might Selig invalidate the record? Will he scatter asterisks around the outfield as one of his predecessors, Ford Frick, did in 1961 when Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's season record of 60?

Since then, Mark McGwire broke that one-season record with 70 in 1998 as Bud cheered a great home-run race that restored Major League Baseball's popularity. Bonds established the current standard with 73 three years later, with considerable silence from the commissioner's office.

The prevailing view is that McGwire's and Bonds' records were tarnished by use of muscle-powering substances. Never really proven. And not illegal in Bud's domain when the home runs were hit.

The irony is that much of Bud's $14.5 million income was the result of the revival of mass public interest in baseball. Mass public interest due to the home-run prowess of McGwire, Bonds and Sammy Sosa.

Plus the nightly video reenactment of their home runs on ESPN, Fox Sports Net and local TV outlets.

It is all a riddle.

Baseball was seriously damaged just 13 years ago by a labor dispute during which the athletes and Bud and his franchise owners were at loggerheads about salaries.

With the games stopped, Bud canceled the 1994 World Series.

One asterisk for the 1994 season.

The 2002 All-Star Game was to be a showpiece in Bud's old stomping grounds of Milwaukee. It turned into a tragi-comedy. Tied 7-7 after 11 innings, the American and National Leagues had used all their pitchers. Instead of permitting some pitchers who had exerted themselves for one inning to return to the game and play it to a decision, Bud called the whole thing off.

Then he issued a postmortem reprinted by baseball-almanac.com. Bud's statement, to wit:

"Nobody wanted to play more than I did, but I have to balance the hopes and concerns of the fans against the welfare of the players and the game. And every so often you get caught in a really difficult and sensitive situation. This is why they have a commissioner, because somebody has to make those decisions."

So it was Bud's brainstorm to make a decision that a baseball showpiece would have no decision.

One more asterisk for the 2002 season.

Such wisdom continued as the musclemen of baseball continued to hit homers by the dozen and ESPN continued to show them for the entertainment of America.

Persistent rumors floated all the while that many of the musclemen were juiced -- that they were bolstering their muscles with steroids.

Alas, Selig and baseball decided to ignore the steroids issue while the situation festered -- and meddling U.S. government pests became more and more curious and, finally, involved.

Sports Illustrated deeply detailed the accusations that Bonds had cheated with a variety of naughty stuff, and critiqued Selig's inaction in its March 13, 2006 issue.

"With Kafka-esque logic, Selig has argued that because there were no steroids tests before 2003, there is nothing to investigate," wrote SI's Tom Verducci. "But of course there were no tests because the owners and players didn't want them, and public opinion and the threat of congressional intervention had yet to force their hands."

Thus, baseball employed a commissioner earning his millions by deciding not to decide.

We are currently receiving daily updates in the countdown to the erasure of baseball's most glorified record. Bonds creeps toward that record Henry Aaron established so historically and so gloriously three decades ago.

And shhhhh, Bud Selig creeps toward another $14.5 million, or more, while maintaining his silence.

Bonds is hugely unpopular away from San Francisco, his home base. He is condemned in ballparks across America as a cheater. He is condemned by journalists and fans across America as a slugger whose home run output has been unethically enhanced.

Mark McGwire was turned into a victim when the bulk of the voting sportswriters denied him entrance to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile the commissioner of baseball sticks to his guns -- golden silence and wishy-washy decisions. What happens to Bonds when he surpasses Aaron with No. 756? Bonds' record and McGwire's totals are to be forever considered tainted, tarnished.

Unfairly, I say.

It is Bud's fault, more than anyone's, that Major League Baseball did not have an anti-steroids rule until 2003.

How does anyone break a rule that doesn't exist?

When Bonds and McGwire were at their most productive, steroids were no more a violation of MLB's rules than push-ups.

Jerry Green is a former Detroit News columnist. His Web-only column appears every Sunday.

~~~~~~~~

Sports

Commentary Selig showed no leadership about Bonds

By Emery Filmer
Staff Writer

Published April 8 2007

The news items came about a day apart near the middle of last week. Separately, neither story was enough to attract much attention. Together, however, they further emphasized the confounding state of major league baseball.

First the news came that commissioner Bud Selig earned more than $14 million last season.

The next day Barry Bonds moved within 20 homers of tying Hank Aaron by smacking his 735th career home run.

That left us to ponder these two highly-paid men, their impact the game and how they will be forever linked.

Bonds will, in all likelihood, break Aaron's career home run record later this season. It will be an odd, actually downright uncomfortable, moment for baseball because Bonds' name has been mentioned predominantly in major steroid-related cases in the last several years, including his alleged connection to the BALCO scandal.

Aaron's record of 755 home runs is probably the greatest record in sports. He has held the mark since passing the immortal Babe Ruth 33 years ago. It wasn't pretty back then, either, because so many people in this country weren't happy to see an African American break Ruth's record. Aaron later spoke of the numerous death threats he received before hitting his record-breaking blast.

We've come a long way since then, but baseball once again has a public relations problem. The time you can't blame society. It's self-inflicted. And you have to look no further than the commissioner's office for the culprit . . . you know, the guy "earning" $14 million per.

Selig has handled the Bonds mess in the worst way imaginable. He has helped contribute to the cloud of doubt that hangs over Bonds by insisting that MLB won't make a big fuss when Bonds breaks the record. Selig has seemingly gone out of his way in recent months to authenticate Bonds' sullied reputation.

Now, that would be all fine and dandy if Selig was going to parlay that attitude with disciplining Bonds in some way for his connection to the steroid scandal. But Selig has done nothing. He has apparently done nothing for a good reason: The Players Association would fight any suspension because Bonds has never tested positive or been proven guilty in any way.

And that's where the commish has, well, shall we say, failed to earn his money.

Selig either should have suspended Bonds in some way, or have tried dilligently to tout him to save the game for what promises to be one ugly moment, especially if Bonds breaks the record on the road.

By suspending Bonds, or at least disciplining him in some way, baseball would have at least been consistent with popular opinion. Selig could have attempted to invoke the "Best Interests of Baseball" clause to do this. Then, when Bonds hits No. 756 to a chorus of boos, baseball could have somewhat avoided a major embarrassment and the head honcho could have said, "Well, at least I did everything I could do."

But if Selig wasn't going to hand out any disciplinary action against Bonds, he should have gone the opposite route and promoted the Giants' slugger. He should have spent the last year imploring us every day to accept that Bonds has never failed a drug test and that there isn't a shred of evidence proving Bonds' guilt in any steroid scandal.

Perhaps if the highly-paid commissioner had handled it in such a manner, the public reaction would be somewhat improved now and the game would not be on the verge of suffering a terrible black eye when Aaron's record falls.

Remember how the Yankees deftly handled the cases of Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield, who certainly appeared guilty, but never tested positive or were proven guilty? Everyone seemed to get past those cases quickly and now Giambi and Sheffield are as popoular as ever. The same could have happened with Bonds had Selig handled it better.

But the way Selig dealt with it -Êno punishment, but also no show of support -Êwas the worst thing that could have happened.

For $14 million, baseball and its fans deserve one of the following from their fearless leader: Either a no-doubt-about-it asterisk next to Bonds' name after he breaks Aaron's record, or a no-doubt-about-it new record-holder who is accepted by all. Selig could have given us the former with a suspension or some sort of severe punishment, or the latter by providing the kind of pat on the back the Yankees gave Giambi and Sheffield.

Instead we are left with a worst case scenario: Bonds -Êfree of punishment, but full of suspicion -Êbreaks the game's most cherished record and gets booed mightily in the process, and the sport becomes a laughingstock.

For $14 million, baseball deserves better.

Emery Filmer can be reached at emery.filmer@scni.com

Baseball’s Own March Madness

Scandals have become a regrettable part of MLB tradition, and this 2007 season looks to be no exception.

By Mark Starr

Newsweek

Updated: 5:14 p.m. PT March 22, 2007

March 22, 2007 - The season hasn’t even begun yet and baseball has already provided a refresher course in its tarnished modern legacy. We are seeing the beginning of what is potentially another major drug scandal as well as another confessional chapter for a baseball legend who has turned out to be as inveterate a liar as he was a gambler—and no better at it.

The latest drug scandal hasn’t yet yielded a treasure trove of celebrities like the BALCO scandal, which sent superstars like Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield and Marion Jones parading before a federal grand jury in San Francisco. Still, when a bust of a mail-order pharmacy operation—part of a widespread federal investigation into illegal, performance-enhancing drugs—kicks up alleged customers like John Rocker, Jose Canseco, Evander Holyfield, an NFL team physician and a swarm of pro wrestlers, it grabs my attention.

Of the athletes named so far, the most interesting situation may be that of Gary Matthews Jr., a 32-year-old centerfielder who was allegedly sent human growth hormone (HGH) in 2004. Until last season, Matthews had been a fringe ballplayer aspiring to the stature of journeyman. During seven seasons in the majors, Matthews hit .249 with only 57 career home runs—and had already been with six different teams. But last year with the Texas Rangers, Matthews skipped right past journeyman into stardom. He hit .313 with career highs in home runs (17) and RBIs (79) and he parlayed that performance into a $50 million, five-year deal with the Angels.

Angels’ owner Arte Moreno was more than a little perturbed when his latest star acquisition was linked with performance-enhancing drugs—and even more distressed when Matthews balked at addressing the issue. I can only imagine the thoughts that ran through Moreno’s head, as they would have anybody’s. Did I buy a pig in a poke? If I did, what might I be stuck with at $10 million per year (and what are my options to get out from under)? And, oh yeah, where’s the outrage from Matthews?

The team and the league would probably have liked Matthews to emulate Giambi’s public apology to fans during spring training a few years ago. Giambi’s performance—mocked by sports commentators at the time because he refused to say what he was apologizing for—apparently now stands as baseball’s gold standard for mea culpas. And why not? Giambi quickly settled back into his career without the kind of eternal shadow that haunts Bonds’s. What they got from Matthews, instead, was 16 days of silence. Finally, he issued a brief, written statement that included a succinct, if hardly comprehensive denial—“I have never taken HGH.” It left open a lot of other possibilities. Perhaps he was simply a collector. Regardless, the Angels management took no time at all to embrace the response, saying in classic neo-speak that they believed there would be no further problem in this matter if there is no further problem.

That’s certainly a big “if.” These federal investigations, as we have witnessed in the BALCO case, tend to linger. There is no indication that Matthews is the target of any investigation. (HGH wasn’t even banned by baseball until the 2005 season, and there still is no effective test for it.) Still, if Matthews doesn’t sustain his 2005 form, he may be in for a very rough time of it. Moreover, when any player takes 16 days to respond to allegations that he received mail-order HGH, fans are entitled to their suspicion. If the long, sorry history of athletes and drugs has taught us anything, it is to expect, at best, obfuscation—“I’m not here to talk about the past”—and, more often, lies.

Not that baseball needs any reminders about the art of prevarication. Because when it comes to lying, Pete Rose continues to put on a Hall of Fame clinic. With his latest offering, in an interview with ESPN, Rose has now gone from “I didn’t gamble on baseball” to “I didn’t gamble on my own team” to “I bet on my team every single game.” The latest incarnation of his sordid tale is a desperate attempt to transform degeneracy into a misguided act of loyalty. What’s remarkable is how Rose apparently keeps lying and somehow manages to keep the affection of fans, too. When there have been discrepancies between Rose’s story and the Dowd report, baseball’s official investigation into Rose’s gambling activities, the latter has always proved to be the accurate version. And it is clear that Rose, as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, only bet on his team selectively. Baseball has cut him adrift and it’s past time for fans to show him the gate, too.

Still, Rose is nothing more now than a carnival sideshow. The incessant drumbeat of drugs remains center stage, a continuing threat to the well-being of baseball. Baseball may not be the only sport facing fallout from this latest scandal, but it is the one that can least afford to be lumped with professional wrestling. Certainly not in the event of what will likely be a historic season—one with the specter of drugs hovering all over it.

Baseball can certainly point to its positives—lots of fannies in the seats, hits on MLB.com; and new ties with leagues in other countries. But all are overshadowed by the game’s inability to lay the drug issue to rest. The death last week of former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn reminded us of how unsettled the modern game is. Many in baseball never forgave Kuhn for not being in attendance when Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s hallowed career-home-run mark. Now, 33 years later, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig may never be forgiven if he does attend the game in which Bonds surpasses Aaron. Staying away is probably Selig’s best option, but given the magnitude of the occasion, that’s a pretty sad state of affairs.

DNA samples taken from partygoers in De Anza rape case

De Anza Baseball Rape Investigation Continues

Final DNA Sample Given In Alleged De Anza Baseball Rape Case

EDITORIAL/Baseball draft scandal

Commentary Selig showed no leadership about Bonds

Baseball’s Own March Madness

Scandals have become a regrettable part of MLB tradition, and this 2007 season looks to be no exception.