Mitch Perry
Happy Friday, y’all. Hey, can we talk baseball this December morning? Okay, how ’bout hypocrisy?
Bud Selig, the commissioner who presided over the game’s golden age of steroid use, was named to the sacred Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this week by what is called the “veterans committee.”
That’s not to be confused with the Baseball Writers Association of America, who will most likely once again diss Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens when they vote next month on who should make the hall.
There were a lot of other elements of the Selig era, but the press certainly was fascinated by the explosion of people using performing enhancing drugs (PED’s) during the late 1990’s and early aughts, and none were better on (or off them) than Bonds and Clemens.
Of course, it should be noted, steroid use was completely legal in the game at the time. A weak policy was put in place in 2003, but it was strengthen in the fall of 2005 after Congress threatened to intervene. Leading the game at that time was Selig, who, like most of the baseball establishment (including us fans) pretty much ignored the controversy until it centered around a guy that nobody liked named Barry Bonds.
Bonds owns both the all-time home run record for one season, hitting 73 in 2001, as well as the most in the history of the game, when he eclipsed Hank Aaron in 2007.
Bonds was a universally loathed man, but he was beloved in San Francisco. The same for Clemens in the towns that he played in. Alex Rodriguez? Well, when people were throwing fake needles at Bonds during his run-up to breaking the all time home run record in ’07, A-Rod was hitting 54 homers in the Bronx, and NYC sports writers were saying that he would ultimately surpass Bonds. Then A-Rod got busted again for steroid use himself a couple of years later, and ultimately became the whipping boy of the New York city dailies.
Of course, “Big Papi” David Ortiz also got busted for ‘roids a decade ago, but hey, he’s beloved by everyone, so nobody likes to bring that up. In fact Selig’s successor, Rob Manfred, says that drug test that Ortiz failed back then may have been faulty.
“I think that the feeling was, at the time that name was leaked, that it was important to make people understand that even if your name was on that list, that it was entirely possible that you were not a positive,” Manfred told the Boston Globe on October 3, Big Papi’s final day as a pro. “I do know that he’s never been a positive at any point under our program.”
Whatever. But come on, isn’t it time to end the punishment for these stars for doing better what so many others were doing at the time? At least some sportswriters are seeing the light. Veteran San Francisco Chronicle scribe Susan Slusser tweeted last week that it’s “senseless to keep steroid guys out when the enablers are in Hall of Fame. I now will hold my nose and vote for players I believe cheated.”
Will her colleagues in the baseball media follow suit?
In other news..
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel delivered a letter to Donald Trump earlier this week from 17 big-city mayors, calling on the President-elect to reconsider his vow to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the provision that protects young, so-called Dreamers who came to the country before the age of 16 from deportation and allows them to study and work in the U.S. Bob Buckhorn wasn’t on the letter, but said he would have signed if he were asked.
Marco Rubio and the Republican Senate isn’t about to give Merrick Garland an up or down vote regarding his nomination for the Supreme Court, but a coalition of progressive groups in Florida aren’t giving up the opportunity to think about it during the lame -duck session of Congress.
And the Tampa City Council District 7 election is over, but the hard feelings aren’t – at least with one fallen candidate.
