I know, I know
sandcrabs February 14th, 2008
As I’ve stated before, and if you’re a regular reader of Write Up Front (why wouldn’t you be?) I really don’t care about Major League Baseball. So much has been done in the sport to tarnish this once proud American pastime. They purity of the sport that I played as a kid has been replaced by the muck of what happens to most of the major sports…money.
The current hearings in Washington regarding the soap opera that is Roger Clemens vs. Brian McNamee is ridiculous. I’m sure our elected officials have much more important issues that they should be dealing with, such as a sagging economy, the war in Iraq and the overall direction of our country to name just a few. Having politicians involved makes this dark chapter in baseball even more sad. Congress doesn’t know how to run our country. How is it they think they won’t mess this up as well? You have Democrats hammering Clemens and Republicans taking it out on McNamee. Give me a break. It should have never got to this point.
Which brings up something else. Why is Bud Selig getting a free pass on this? Much as the President receives most of the blame for the state of our country, so should the commissioner. He has presided over baseball during the “steroid era” and has plunged the sport into this quagmire. The punishment? He’s been rewarded by the owners with a new contract. That’s as bad as the Democrats not being able to come up with a candidate better than John Kerry to challenge the sitting President. Bud Selig should also have to face the difficuly questions and the embarrassment of trying to explain how he could have let things get this bad.
I’ll tell you how it happened. Baseball was coming off a work stoppage that cancelled the World Series. It’s reputation was in the dirt, or lower. Something needed to be done in order to resurrect the sport. Enter McGwire and Sosa. Their epic battle chasing the single season homerun record was fascinating even for a non-fan such as myself. From there, the power of hitters kept increasing culminating in the current homerun kind, Barry Bonds. At any time Bud could have, and should have stepped in to prevent this from happening. There have been many who have stepped up implicating Selig in knowing what was going on with the steroid abuse. Yet, Bud did nothing. His sport needed the attention it was getting and having viewership on the rise meant more t.v. money for the league, which he would benefit from directly.
Don’t blame the players. They were just doing what was allowed. Much as with raising children, if you don’t provide rules and boundries how can you expect them to behave accordingly? Consequently, you can not punish them for something they’ve been allowed to participate in without restrictions or limitations.
Make your rules. Outline the punishment for such behavior and move on. You can not keep dredging up the past in an attempt to show “Hey, we’re doing something about this issue.” You are attempting to absolve yourselves of any wrongdoing when, in fact, you were the cause of it. Bud, you should slip quietly into obscurity as quickly as possible. Should you continue to hang on you will be brought down in this mess as much as those you castigate.
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