Bud Selig Goes Fishing

Once again, Commissioner Bud Selig has made a mockery of the game that he is supposed to be safeguarding. The fans deserve a real probe into steroids and the game, with appropriate punishments to be meted out to the guilty. But, what we’re getting is another dog and pony show, MLB style. No, scratch that, Bud Selig style.

Somehow the commissioner has forgotten that his duty to the game is not just to help market it or increase revenue at the gates, but to protect the game’s integrity. Yet Selig has never shown any inclination to do that. Time and time again, he’s tried to sweep the steroids scandal and MLB’s lack of a drug policy under the rug.

Today, he can rightfully claim that MLB has one of the strongest drug policies in professional sports, despite the fact that the policy still is full of holes. Any claim from the commissioner’s office that the drug policy was something he put into place is an out and out lie. Baseball went kicking and screaming to the table in an effort to root out steroids or any other kind of drug. Neither they nor the Player’s Union wanted a steroid policy at all. Home runs sold seats, and the owners were willing to maintain the status quo so long as ticket sales were good. The real drug policy was "look the other way and pretend it isn’t happening."

To be fair, Selig saw the writing on the wall once the fans and Congress started taking notice of the problem. He made some noise about the policy he’d like to have in place while Donald Fehr and the Players Union continued to bury their heads in the sand, praying Selig would find a way to make the whole steroids issue disappear. The Commish stepped to the plate only after it was clear that the sportswriters, fans, and statesmen of the country weren’t going to be distracted by the smoke and mirrors that he offered over and over.

Now it’s back to the same kind of shell game. What is supposed to be an independent probe into steroid use has been hamstrung, first by the appearance of impropriety and conflict of interest in the choice of investigator and second by the fact that this independent investigator has no power whatsoever to compel anyone to talk to him about the issues.

Perhaps Selig is naïve enough to believe that George Mitchell really doesn’t have a conflict of interest despite that he’s a chairman at Disney (which owns ESPN), or that his network is airing Barry Bonds’ reality television show, or the fact he works for the Red Sox organization. Of course Selig didn’t think there was a conflict of interest when he was working as commissioner and owned the Milwaukee Brewers, or when he was creating the revenue sharing agreement, and he was still an owner. It’s possible that he just can’t see the obvious. George Mitchell is a good man who has worked as a Senator in the past. Whether or not he is capable of being impartial or not isn’t important; just the suspicion of conflict of interest and impropriety is enough to taint this probe.

Of course if you are going to sic someone who’s perceived as a paper tiger on the players, you might as well go all the way. Mitchell has no power and no ability to reward or punish those who talk or refuse to. He cannot compel anyone affiliated with baseball to talk to him. All he can do is appeal to their conscience and hope for the very best.

I can already see Barry Bonds breaking down in tears and coming clean. Yeah, right.

Selig doesn’t really want to discover anything, and he likely won’t. In my opinion, the major excavations of the truth have already been done by journalists and confirmed by the testimony of players like Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco. No matter how much this probe uncovers, there will always be critics who will question how deep it really dug.

This is a fishing expedition in the hope that some minor villains can be ferreted out and Selig can make a big proclamation that the steroid era is over. He’s hoping for another Pittsburgh Parrot. (For those who don’t remember or are not old enough to remember the Parrot, I’ll remind you who he was. He was the old Pirates mascot who apparently was guilty of helping professional ballplayers get cocaine back in the early 80s. After several players were caught with cocaine they cut deals to testify against the parrot. The players got a slap on the wrist and the Parrot -- or the guy inside the suit at least -- got thrown in prison. With that, baseball implied that the recreational use of drugs was under control.)

Of course since no one can be compelled to testify, or even speak on the issue, it’s likely that nothing of any substance will come of this “probe.” If nothing comes of it, no one can be dealt the appropriate punishment that Commissioner Bud has promised. That shouldn’t be a surprise, nor should the fact that the probe is limited to just the last two years.

There is no denying that Selig has done some great things for the game of baseball, but he has failed miserably at protecting the integrity of the game. Only part of that can be blamed on the Player’s Union stymieing efforts to root out steroids; the bulk of the burden lies on Selig for being afraid of speaking out, for failing to bring the steroid problem to the public eye long ago, for pussyfooting around the issue because of labor relations, and now for this joke of a probe.

We deserve to have a fair, balanced, and honest game. The commissioner is supposed to ensure that happens. On that score, Selig has failed, as has his whole regime.

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