What About Bud?

January 4, 2008

By Mike Santa Barbara

How in the hell did this happen? How did steroids, HGH, and other performance enhancing drugs take over America’s pastime? These are some of the questions millions of Americans have been asking themselves since the Mitchell report was released. The real shame is none of us are really surprised that only two distributors of PED’s were able to implicate over 80 former and current major leaguers. And we would all be foolish to believe that there are only two “people” to buy PED’s from in the dark underworld of Major League Baseball. So whom do we blame? Who should we be angry with and who should be punished? Bud Selig.  The man who should be held solely responsible for what will be known as the “Steroid Era.”

Article II, section 2 of the Major League Baseball Constitutional agreement grants the Commissioner of Baseball the power:

“To investigate any act, transaction or practice charged, alleged or suspected to be not in the best interests of the national game of Baseball. With authority to summon persons and to order the production of documents and in case of refusal to appear or produce, impose such penalties as are hereinafter provided.”

By the way that power is available to the Commissioner at any time. Not two, three, not five, not even ten years down the line when it’s the only way out. Bud Selig is a coward and a fraud and should be asked to resign immediately. True there are lots of people who are to blame in this whole mess that is without argument.  However, the man in charge should take the fall, like a manager of an under performing team, he must go. He must go if Baseball is to ever recover and earn back some semblance of respectability.

In the early 90’s steroids were just bursting onto the scene. Everyone knew something was going on, but what, most weren’t sure. Players were changing; guys were coming to spring training 30lbs heavier and able to hit the ball harder and further. Older pitchers were getting better with age, throwing harder, and pitching more innings. The buzz was all around clubhouses in the Major Leagues; something should have been done then. At the time the powers that be were busy trying to make sure a work stoppage did not happen. It did happen and the 1994 season was canceled including the World Series. After the unions got everything straight there was a worry that people wouldn’t come out to baseball games in the numbers they used to. They needed something fresh, new, exciting, and that came from Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire’s pursuit of Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. After all of that it was too late to turn back now. Fans were back in the seats, money was back in the owner’s pockets, and baseball was fresh on the minds of nearly every American.

Bud Selig couldn’t possibly turn his back on the same owners that banded together with him to help get Fay Vincent out of the commissioner’s chair.  The league was hot, the owners were rich, what’s the problem right? Bud was in a tough position yes, but he made his own bed. In a last ditch effort to save himself Bud hired George Mitchell to “investigate” the use of steroids in HIS league. Mitchell only interviewed two active players, digging up information not worthy of a courtroom from a waste of life club house “rat” Kirk Radomski and glorified trainer Brian McNamee.  Every bit of evidence in a court of law would be complete hearsay and every player named in the Mitchell report knows it. So now they can all defend themselves, saying they only took it a couple days, weeks, during the off-season, never constantly, never to get an edge. A guy like Roger Clemens can come out and flat out deny everything said about him in the Mitchell Report and nobody can call him out on it.

The whole Mitchell Report was a giant circus orchestrated indirectly by Bud Selig himself. Bud tried to cover his ass, a last ditch effort while congress breathed down his neck, hired Mitchell knowing the MLB Players Association wouldn’t cooperate, without it knowing Mitchell would find the least amount of damaging evidence. The Mitchell Report took over a year to complete meanwhile he only unearthed two distributors of PED’s? Of course most of that evidence was given to Mitchell from whom? That’s right the office of the commissioner of MLB, Bud Selig.  At the end of the Mitchell Report he offered some recommendations to the league, what they should do to try and help solve this problem, to look towards a brighter future. Every recommendation given by Mitchell was drawn out as if they weren’t obvious to every baseball fan in the world. The whole thing is disguised as a step in the right direction. The Selig circus is back in town; everyone will be so distracted by the performers they won’t see the ringleader sneaking out the back. It’s time for Bud to step down, now.

Contact Mike Santa Barbara at MikeSBPhillyPurge@yahoo.com