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Friday, September 30, 2005
Greatest final weekend vindicates Selig
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
This just in: You can add steroids to the mighty list of things (Black Sox Scandal, dead-ball era, labor battles, designated hitters, the Pittsburgh drug trials, no day World Series games, the NFL) that have tried and failed to kill baseball. Not only did the game break its all-time attendance record this week for the second consecutive year, but with two days left during the regular season, a couple of playoff races are wonderfully chaotic.
So you know what? Bud Selig is vindicated again. The supposedly overmatched baseball commissioner of the early 1990s is the suddenly omniscient baseball commissioner of all time. That is, if we’re talking about his ability to discover ways to keep September from becoming only an NFL thing.
Baseball has countered touchdowns and tackles with drama and more drama. At the start of the week, only one of eight playoff spots in the American and National leagues were decided. Plus, with the ongoing thrills at Fenway Park between those legendary archrivals from the Bronx and Boston, the best is yet to come.
“When I think of the abuse that I took way back when about [adding a wild-card team to the playoffs] — about what I was doing to the sport and all of that, but now, of course, everybody is just in love with it, and those detractors seem to forget that they were detractors,” Selig said Friday from his office in Milwaukee. Actually, he was speaking to one of those detractors. I thought his wild cards and his decision to change each league from two divisions to three smacked of Satan.
Now look at the heavenly results: You still haven’t a winner in the AL East, courtesy of the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. You have the Cleveland Indians with a chance to join that Fenway loser in a showdown for the AL’s wild-card berth. You also had the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies entering the weekend in search of the NL’s wild-card berth. In other words, with apologies to Bobby Thomson, baseball is in the midst of its greatest final week ever.
“Oh, I think so,” said Selig, a noted baseball historian. “Certainly people talk about 1951 [as in “The Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant”], and they talk about 1964 [as in the St. Louis Cardinals surging by the collapsing Phillies], and they talk about 1978 [Bucky “Bleeping” Dent], but this has been a remarkable season. Everything has worked.”
Well, sort of. Congress was not amused this spring when a lying Rafael Palmeiro wagged his finger at committee members and said he never used steroids in a sport that has been dominated by the stuff during recent years. It hasn’t mattered to fans, though, and neither has Barry Bonds’ aborted home run chase of Babe Ruth’s 714 and Hank Aaron’s 755. Despite word about his alleged steroid usage courtesy of leaked grand jury testimony, Bonds still is huge at the plate and at the gate. He missed most of the season with various knee surgeries, but the game’s popularity continued to roll without him.
In fact, even with baseball’s weak but effective new drug testing contributing to a slew of incredibly shrinking sluggers, that roll hasn’t stopped. It has lasted from the Montreal Expos looking spiffy after becoming the Washington Nationals to Andruw Jones’ bat and the Braves’ overwhelming youth spurring the turnstiles at Turner Field to these Yankees doing something that all of those other Yankees couldn’t do, and that is attract more than four million folks at home.
It’s ultimately about the game. It’s always about the game, especially when you have excitement like this.
“I’m going to St. Louis Sunday to help them close their ballpark, which is going to be a wonderful experience for me, because everybody’s going to be there,” Selig said. “But believe me, I’m in the great position this weekend of not knowing what to watch. Cleveland and Chicago. New York and Boston. Philadelphia. Houston. This has just been a wonderful, wonderful season with a stunning last week.”
And get this? Baseball still has October, usually its best month. “Wow,” said Selig, with a soft chuckle.
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