Selig 'Shamed Game' as Much as A-Rod

So there goes Bud Selig, absentee commissioner of baseball, pointing his long, crooked finger at the latest big-name steroids villain. It's so convenient for Bud Lite to say Alex Rodriguez "shamed the game" when, in fact, Selig and the owners share total culpability in the shame game by never caring enough to declare an early war on performance-enhancing drugs.



This is a man so big on spinning the truth and so small on actual results, we've even caught Selig in his own A-Rod moment. In a story published Thursday in USA Today, the commissioner said he sent an official "bulletin" about the illegal nature of steroids in 1997. The problem with that? Selig already was on record as saying he'd heard no discussion about steroids until 1998 or 1999, which means either his memory is foggy or his nose is growing -- probably the latter.

"I never even heard about it. I ran a team [the Milwaukee Brewers], and nobody was closer to their players. And I never heard any comment from them. It wasn't until 1998 or '99 that I heard the discussion," Selig said four years ago in San Francisco.

Oh, but there's more. How could he not have heard the discussion until 1998 or '99 when in July of 1995, in the Los Angeles Times, the commissioner acknowledged to baseball writer Bob Nightengale that the steroid issue was addressed by Selig and the owners as far back as a year to 18 months earlier, which now puts us in, um, early 1994. That's roughly when the roots of the steroids problem, according to timelines we've learned through the various investigations and confessions, began to explode. Yet Selig told the Times that he and the owners weren't worried in the least, even though the story suggested 10 to 20 percent of major leaguers were using steroids in claims supported by two general managers, Randy Smith and Kevin Malone, and anti-steroid superstars Tony Gwynn and Frank Thomas.

"If baseball has a problem, I must say candidly that we were not aware of it," Selig told the newspaper then. "It certainly hasn't been talked about much. But should we concern ourselves as an industry? I don't know. Maybe it's time to bring it up again."

Obviously, he didn't do that until it was much too late. And now, almost 14 years later, Selig is telling us that he's "heartsick" over the blockbuster that Rodriguez used steroids for at least three years, as if this development actually took him by surprise. "I am saddened by the revelations," Selig said Thursday in a statement, which, typically, came three days after Rodriguez's tell-all (tell-some?) interview. "What Alex did was wrong, and he will have to live with the damage he has done to his name and reputation."

At least Rodriguez had the guts, unlike Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire, to reveal himself as a steroid user and out himself as a liar. Selig has yet to issue his own apology to the public, instead painting himself as an innocent party who is so whiplashed by it all that he sounds like a jilted lover. "This is breaking my heart, I don't mind telling you," he said. Spare us the schmaltz and goo, commish.

Always more concerned about framing his legacy than doing his job, Selig should know right here, right now, how his legacy will read.

He'll be forever remembered as the Commissioner of the Steroid Era, a slick Mr. Magoo, the man who enabled a sad, repulsive era in sports history because he and the owners -- who pushed out independent commissioner Fay Vincent in 1992 because they wanted the power -- allowed the syringes and juice to happen under their greedy noses.

Selig and his supporters like to trumpet how he straightened out the game's economics, lifted its popularity and created new attendance records, which is exactly my point. Selig was so wrapped up in making money, he grew purposely blind to the steroids that produced the power numbers, thus awakening baseball from its post-strike attention rut.

It's clear, based on the Times story in '95, that Selig was aware of steroids then and there. It's also clear he sat back, loved watching the Home Run Derby drama between McGwire and Sammy Sosa and was too mesmerized by the cha-chinging to care that Bonds and so many others were juicing, too. When Major League Baseball finally wielded some clout and instituted survey testing for steroids, it was 2003, well into Rodriguez's "experimentation" phase.

Selig took WAY ... TOO ... DAMN ... LONG. Hence, I've written often that he should step down as commissioner, knowing that the owners are too lined with baseball riches to ever consider firing him. Whatever contributions he has made in fixing the sport's financial health are offset by his hideous, see-no-evil handling of the steroids ills that have spanned his commissionership. The owners pretend to care about the steroids crisis, but they are much more appreciative of his business acumen, to the point he received -- reach for the vomit bag -- an $18.5 million salary last year. If President Obama is cracking down on excessive wages for executives, he should start with Bud Lite.

Maybe Scott Van Pelt took Bud-bashing a bit far when he described Selig as a pimp on ESPN Radio, then belittled him as "someone who looks like a computer programmer, substitute teacher or government worker" and has a house that features "plastic on sofas, and it would smell bad." Also, he said Selig "has a chalice with 'B-U-D' spelled out in jewels and diamonds. You drink from a chalice if you're a pimp."

Yet it's understandable why Selig evokes such outrage in media and fans alike. The man in charge of the game, the man who had the gall with Jerry Reinsdorf to push Vincent out of office, did absolutely nothing as the biggest scandal ever in American sports unfolded before him. What nerve to actually suggest Wednesday, before thinking better, that he might suspend A-Rod, telling USA Today, "It was against the law, so I would have to think about that. It's very hard. I've got to think about all that kind of stuff."

Why weren't you thinking about "all that kind of stuff" before, Bud? When Rodriguez describes the early part of this decade as "a loosey-goosey era" for steroids, where, oh, where were you?

It's a little too late for justice. You can't suspend Rodriguez now for one simple reason: It would discourage steroids users from coming forward and spilling their guts. What we want now is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, a complete explanation of the Steroid Era -- who, what, when, where and why. I want to know all the players who used, including the other 103 on the A-Rod list. I want executives and managers to explain what they knew. I want players to describe the era, specify how often they used steroids and how they obtained the drugs. And I want Selig and the union creeps, Don Fehr and Gene Orza, to be summoned to Capitol Hill and forced to explain what they really knew and why there wasn't a strong effort to end the steroids craze. I think we all know the answer: M-O-N-E-Y.

But I want to hear Bud say it.

And then he can get the hell out of the game, immediately, so baseball has a chance of preventing another steroids crisis in coming years.

The one good deed he can perform before going away is separating the Steroid Era from others in history, so Henry Aaron can remain the official home run king and the likes of Bonds and Rodriguez can be blackballed in the books. Selig says he'll consider reinstating his pal, Aaron, as the record-holder -- but his words are accompanied by the usual wishy-washiness. "Once you start tinkering, you can create more problems," Selig told USA Today. "But I'm not dismissing it. I'm concerned. I'd like to get some more evidence."

What more could he possibly need?