Bud Selig - The Day to Step Down
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by Mlnsports
Bud Selig should resign today after the Mitchell Commission issues its report on the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball.
The Commish, who brought you the tie game and the faux home run record, is going to get hammered today by Mitchell's group, along with the 80 or so players reported to be included as examples of the epidemic of performance enhancers used in baseball.
There is no greater endictment of Selig's tenure as the Commissioner than his handling of the effect of drugs on the game. In the ultimate insider's business, one of your own, an owner or a player, cannot run the National Pastime.
Sure, Selig will point to his "get tough" stance on minor league drug usage, where he has more leverage to effect penalties than against the players covered by the union (the MLBPA).
Still, how does a guy from the Dominican who can't afford his food buy 'roids that cost thousands of dollars? How many scouts don't supply the stuff, but point out that the kids that they see need that 'something extra' to get that major league contract, knowing full well where they have to go to bulk up quickly and make the grade? Show me a trainer that doesn't know who is juicing, and who isn't. Every one that has walked away from a locker full of syringes, or helped shoot up a player deserves a lifetime ban.
Major League Baseball makes a lot of money out of Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire and the hundreds or thousands of others like them who juice. As long as what they do doesn't hurt the turnstiles, Selig and MLB have turned a blind eye, if not encourged tacitly, the use of performance enhancers to keep the game competitive with the NFL and NECK-CAR.
Had Selig really wanted to stop this epidemic, he would have tossed a couple of people out of the game for testing positive to send a message.
The MLBPA's collective bargaining agreement doesn't cover lifetime bans, because they're invoked so seldomly, and in such severe circumstances, that negotiating them makes the union look even more blind and callous about the game that enriches its players than it already appears.
Selig could have imposed strict sanctions, including the loss of roster spots for the season, on clubs who didn't police their own. Mandatory use of team trainers only for all players under contract. The firing for life of any person working for a club that facilitated use of banned or illegal performance enhancers.
The Commish has vast powers which they can exercise to bring the game to heal.
We need an indepdendent Commissioner's Office. We needed it years ago, but this should be the final straw that sends Bud Light back to the used car lot and puts someone who can heal the game, and broker the appropriate deals between the owners and the players to get a handle on steroids once and for all, in place.
The utter scandal of the biggest record in baseball, the all-time homerun record, being allowed by Bud Light knowing full well that Bonds would go down in flames, just so his buddies could enrich themselves with a few more shekels of the fans' money, was inexcusable.
The office of the Commissioner of Baseball was established after the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal, where players of cheapskate ChiSox chief Charles Comiskey half-heartedly fixed a world series by rigging some of its early games for gambling interests.
The scandal of that more Victorian time threatened to ruin the game, and ushered in the independent Commissioner's Office, with the beyond-reproach Judge Kennisaw Mountain Landis at the helm. All players found involved were banned for life, as should happen when someone tries to compromise the records of sport by cheating for any reason.
The Great Lakes Gang of owners, including Selig, ran off Fay Vincent, the last of the independent commissioners, in 1992, after the ownership voted 18-9 against him in a vote of no-confidence.
Since then, both the owners and the players have been plundering the fans and the game like it was a Roman holiday.
Selig's appointment was a scandal that a few noisy journalists bemoaned. The Steroids Era is his legacy. It ends today, and so should his tenure as the "alleged" steward of the game of professional baseball.
- Brian Ross
Brian Ross is the senior editor of MLNSportsZone.com, the oldest magazine on minor league and independent professional sports.
See Also: MLB's Addiction, MAJOR BLOGS (www.majorblogs.net)
