Steroids probe just Selig's joke
March 17, 2006
BUD SELIG, one of the most visible phonies in a society sick with them, is about to get real on us. Baseball's slippery commissioner reportedly plans to look into all these wild allegations bouncing off Barry Bonds.
You know, the 2-year-old allegations that Bonds owned the deepest, dopest personal medicine cabinet in sports.
Should we laugh to ourselves, or run down the street screaming?
This would be a joke. A flat-out, bald-faced, absurd, transparent joke.
If Bud wants to uncover whether Barry partook, it's too late. Nearly everybody already assumes he did.
If Bud wants to find out if Bonds acted alone, it's too late. Nearly everybody already assumes he did not.
If Bud wants to discover why on earth Bonds — or any other ballplayer — would resort to such extreme, it's too late. We already know the answer.
If Bud wants to determine what, if any, kind of punishment can be meted out, well, why would he do that?
In the unlikely event the commish hands down some of kind of discipline, who wouldn't see the injustice of singling out one member of a culture saturated with corruption?
And if there is no discipline, who wouldn't see this charade as yet another example of Bud exposing himself as a disingenuous buffoon, occupied with the appearance of doing something while falsely hoping folks will perceive he actually is doing something.
Which points up the bigger crime: That Selig and the owners and other executives who profited throughout the steroids era have, so far, managed to avoid the kind of thorough inquiries that would seem to be a natural course of action for a problem of such magnitude.
While Bud tries to decide whether he should launch an investigation into Bonds, somebody should order an investigation into the commish and his crew. Maybe Congress, which has shown such outrage, can appoint a commission.
We are eight years removed from baseball reviving itself on the exploits of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Those of us who speculated on the cause of the home run explosion — smaller ballparks, weak pitching, juiced balls, juice — only knew something had changed.
None of us, however, knew better than the players, the trainers, the coaches, the managers and the execs.
Anyone who considered himself a power hitter or a power pitcher had to face the moment during which he pondered his soul and whether to sell it. A mountain of evidence tells us Bonds did.
Jose Canseco admitted he did. So did Jason Giambi. And Wally Joyner. And Mo Vaughn. And the late Ken Caminiti.
Evidence tells us
McGwire also sold his soul. As did Rafael Palmeiro. He was, after all, caught dirty — after insisting he was clean.
What about the sudden declines of Sosa? And Jeff Bagwell? And Pudge Rodriguez? And Juan Gonzalez?
What about the suspicious rise and fall of Bret Boone? And Eric Gagne?
What to make of Brady Anderson's shocking 50-homer season?
Or the renaissance of Roger Clemens? He turned 43 last August and turned in a career-low earned run average two months later. His ERA has dropped dramatically in each of the past two seasons.
There are reasons baseball has kept silent on this issue, and only one of them is its inability to rewrite history. Another is ownership's role in what happened. Performance enhancers influenced the decade following the 1994 lockout, period. We know it, and they know it, likely have for a long time.
But what to do now? How does baseball probe one of its own without digging into the whole of the game?
Can Bud be serious about an episode of Same Old, Same Old, with everybody except Bonds piling into a lifeboat and trying to paddle away, occasionally glancing back to see if Barry is doing a Titanic?
Segregating Bonds is too transparent to be taken seriously. He would be too obvious a fall guy for the sins of hundreds. He might become martyrized.
The use of performance-enhancing substances was so pervasive in the sport that narrowing to focus to one man is misguided on too many levels to count, before getting around to perceptions involving race.
There was no investigation after andro was found in McGwire's locker. Or after the BALCO story broke. Or after McGwire and Sosa went mute before Congress. Or after Palmeiro was busted.
But there might be one now? Because books are being released?
Here's an idea. Conduct an investigation, but include everyone who was a part of the era — certainly those who stood by for eight years, clapping and nodding and lining their pockets with profits.
Keep going until several hundred people, on several levels of the game, stand up and hold themselves
accountable.
