‘Roids make Selig a dope

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/06/2009 (6138 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Here’s a new one — Bud Selig says baseball is held to a HIGHER STANDARD when it comes to the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Selig, of course, is the man who did nothing for close to two decades while ball players went from lean and lithe to pumped and Popeye, thanks to rampant use of performance enhancers.

Only when America’s national pastime was humiliated by the likes of Rafael Palmeiro lying his ass off before Congress about his own use of performance-enhancing drugs did the commissioner finally take serious action to deal with the problem.

And so to hear Selig tell an interviewer this week that he thinks steroid use in baseball gets disproportionate attention in the media… well, the mind boggles.

"We are held to a different and higher standard," Selig told the Dan Patrick Show this week. "Steroids were and are a social problem, not a baseball problem."

Selig then had the audacity to bring up the subject of steroid use in the NFL. I say audacity because the NFL had a real, effective and random drug-testing policy for years while Selig was still busy burying his head in ever increasing mounds of sand.

Referring to allegations that players on the Pittsburgh Steelers juggernaut of the 1970s had more juice than O.J., Selig said: "We have to be very careful that we don’t overreact to a situation… Should they take those Super Bowls away from the Rooneys? I don’t think so." The Rooney family owns the Steelers.

Now, a couple of things leap to mind here. Is Selig an idiot? (He’s also the worst dressed sports executive in history. I interviewed him once at a game in Milwaukee. He was wearing an open-collared dress shirt that was missing a button, was partially untucked and had these horrendous yellow sweat stains in the pits. Classy.)

Second, it is the height of irony that Selig — who did nothing for so long about drug use in his sport — is now worried about "overreacting."

This is funny because you generally have to react first before you can overreact.

Third, how stupid would you have to be to suggest the media pays too much attention to drug use in baseball on the same day that that the New York Times — that sensationalist, baseball-hating rag — reported that home run hero Sammy Sosa was one of, wait for it, 104 baseball players who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003.

This is funny because Sosa, during his chase of the home run record with Mark McGwire in 1998, gave credit in part to Flintstone vitamins for turning him from a normal-looking person into a muscled freak. Yeah, right. "Sosa benefited from banned substances, not Bam Bam supplements," writer Carrie Muskat wrote on MLB.com Wednesday.

When writers on his own website are mocking the issue, you know Selig has a problem.

The drug tests in 2003 were a first for Major League Baseball and were supposed to be kept confidential under a ridiculous agreement MLB struck with the players’ association. But everyone’s leaking like a sieve now and this is only going to get worse for baseball as it becomes clear just how rampant the problem really was.

And, judging by a host of positive tests this year, the problem still is rampant.

Indeed, a casual reading of what has gone on this year would suggest little has changed in baseball — except maybe the players have gotten more creative in what they’re now taking, judging by the revelation in May that Dodgers slugger Manny Ramirez was taking a female hormone that some think would mask steroid use.

The issue of illegal drug use in baseball is a major public policy issue. Whether Selig likes it or not, it’s also got all the elements of a great news story — lying, cheating and covering up.

And that’s just in the commissioner’s office.