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Home > Terence Moore > Archives > 2009 > February > 18
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Selig not to blame for steroids mess
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bud Selig is right. Alex Rodriguez is wrong. So are the slew of folks who don’t agree with what I just wrote.
Here’s how Selig is right: He shouldn’t get hit with a Louisville Slugger for serving as commissioner during the rise of baseball’s steroid era.
For one, Selig just told Newsweek what he has told me before. That is, baseball’s notoriously strong players’ union wouldn’t allow him to enact testing for performance-enhancing drugs during the 1990s. More specifically, Selig pushed for testing in 1995. That was three years before the sham that was artificially enhanced players Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chased Roger Maris’ season-season home run record of 61.
So blame the union, blame the players and blame the culture. But when it comes to why baseball’s steroid era lasted so long, don’t blame Selig, who only could do what he could do, which wasn’t much. He had that union, those players and that culture emphatically and consistently saying, “No,” to his requests for testing.
The union didn’t agree to testing until 2004, when Rodriguez claimed on Tuesday during his insufferable news conference that he stopped a three-year cycle of taking steroids injected by his cousin.
His cousin made him do it? At least Rodriguez could have gotten the devil involved. I guess he isn’t old enough to remember the late Flip Wilson. Then again, the New York Yankees slugger often claimed that, when it came to steroid use, he was young, ignorant and naÔve.
You have to be young, ignorant and naÔve to believe anything Rodriguez says.
As for Selig, you can believe it, because he’s telling the truth.
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