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Saturday, July 21, 2007
Selig just can’t get it right on Bonds
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Roger Goodell presides over a sport that has a high-profile quarterback under indictment for his alleged part in a dogfighting conspiracy. David Stern presides over a sport that has a referee under investigation for point-shaving. Those are ugly situations, but the NFL and the NBA have demonstrated their capacity to limit damage and correct mistakes.
Bud Selig presides over the sport that never gets anything right. Bud Selig is personally sending the message that Barry Bonds hitting No. 756 will be an achievement scarcely worth honoring. Over the All-Star break, Selig called Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs “the most hallowed” record in the sport, but the commissioner obviously regards any thoughts of Bonds exceeding that standard as a deathly hallows.
The chief reason baseball never gets anything right is that Bud Selig presides over it. He pretends to be working in the best interests of his sport, but actually he works to further the interests of whatever seems to be floating the financial boat. When Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were launching homers at a record pace in 1998, this Bud was all for it because people were buying tickets and tuning in. Only when external events — grand juries, Congressional hearings, publication of “Game of Shadows” — exposed the longball binge as a function of steroids did this same Bud decide to share the indignation.
It’s a source of continual amusement that the same commish who couldn’t wait to toast McGwire and Sosa now dithers so publicly over whether he should even show up to watch Bonds pursue this record. He was on hand at Miller Park — Selig still lives in Milwaukee — on Friday because, he told reporters, “[Bonds] is playing here in a game important to the pennant race.”
He was planning to be back Saturday and today, Selig said, but he made it clear he wouldn’t be toting a kit bag of confetti. Any celebration of the record, he said Friday, was at the discretion of the Giants, not Major League Baseball. As for the legitimacy of the record itself, Selig said: “I’m not passing judgment, nor should I.”
By “not passing judgment,” Selig leaves no doubt he regards Bonds as a cheat. But, being his blithering self, Bud won’t come out and say so. That, see, would all but invalidate the sport he’s supposed to be safeguarding. Instead he seeks to have it both ways — he continues to allow Bonds to play and hit home runs but refuses to offer his patriarchal blessing. In the history of team sports, there has never been anything half so
incongruous.
Conventional wisdom holds that Bonds indeed is an artificial slugger, but is conventional wisdom enough to nullify a 21-year body of work? (Bonds was a great player when he was conspicuously slender.) What if nobody ever proves he took steroids? What if baseball never finds grounds to invalidate this record? (FYI, Mc- Gwire’s numbers still stand, and so do Rafael Palmeiro’s. And Jason Giambi, who has admitted using steroids, is still playing for the Yankees.) Twenty years from now, will some other commissioner be apologizing to Bonds for Selig’s refusal to make a bigger fuss back when?
Baseball being baseball, it tried to let some other body do its dirty work, and those bodies have moved too slowly to blunt Bonds’ assault. (The New York Daily News reports the federal grand jury investigating Bonds for perjury has extended its term another six months.) Surely Selig wouldn’t be cringing if the challenge had come from someone less abrasive — Ken Griffey Jr. or Alex Rodriguez — but this way is utterly fitting. A shortsighted sport and its dim-bulb commissioner are about to get the home-run champion they deserve.
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Longing for old Carnoustie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Given where I’d prefer to be, make it Carnoustie. That’s a village in Scotland, built around golf, hard by the North Sea. In fact, Scotland used to export golf professionals to the United States like the Japanese ship cars. The Smith brothers, Alec and MacDonald, Tommy Armour, George Low (the original; Junior became known as “America’s Guest”). All but Armour came from Carnoustie. Ben Hogan went to Carnoustie and won the Open in 1953, then never went back.
Not that Carnoustie was much to look at first time I was there. The clubhouse could have played the central role in “Caddyshack.” Rodney Dangerfield would have been the pro. Daily food fare featured two thin slices of bread with a hint of something or other between. The lone hotel looked like a Super 8 somewhere on a farm road in Kansas. I lucked out. I couldn’t get a room. I think the capacity was eight.
Tom Watson won the 1975 Open at Carnoustie, and for 24 years it never came back. When it did, you never heard such howling. The Royal & Ancient thought they wanted a golf course, not a feather bed. You know how the pros always say, “We are professionals.” When they saw Carnoustie in 1999, they still howled, “We said a golf course, not a pasture.”
Nobody could break par. Winning score was 290, 6-over par, setting up a playoff that a resident of Aberdeen, Paul Lawrie, won over the Frenchman, Jean van de Velde, and forgotten American Justin Leonard. If you have been watching televised golf the past few days, I won’t go into more of that.
Spoiled Americans raise all kinds of gripes about Scotland. I’d have loved to get up and had a Scottish breakfast this morning — hold the blood sausage. They get confused at roundabouts. All you need to know is who has the right-of-way. Americans make their own rules. We need roundabouts.
If you’ve been watching, you’ve heard whistles in the background. Scares you. You think a storm is coming. Play stoppage. (I’ve never seen lightning there.) It’s just the trains flashing by, honking their horns. Train travel is big over there, and convenient. Beats interstates and traffic clutter.
Once I was driving two ladies to the rail station at Leuchers, on the outskirts of St. Andrews. Turning around, I saw golf traffic for miles and decided to seek another route. I saw a bus leaving the station and decided to follow, figuring a bus driver surely knew his way back to St. Andrews. We wheeled merrilly along through the town, then the bus slowed for a turn. I slowed and followed right behind. It was his driveway. He was going home for lunch.
Bathing has never been overdone over there. My first time at an Open I was booked in a room no larger than a Pullman space. Facilities were down the hall. Flomax hadn’t been discovered yet. You get the rest. Now, you may think such 19th century accommodations were a hardship. Oh, you grumbled, but that was part of the game. Get home and make folly of spoiled Americans. Besides, the Scots have found that a belt or two of double malt tames the mood, taken with a dollop or two of haggis. Ingredients uncertain.
This time the Open returned to a cozier Carnoustie. It was as tame as a pussy cat. As if it had been gelded. No rough to speak of. Somebody turned the wind off. A little rain fell, just enough to remind you of Scotland. Scores ran 10 strokes lower, nothing as soft, though, as at Hoylake a year ago where 270 won for Tiger Woods.
Europeans had a home team to cheer about on a rare occasion. The British had adopted Seve Ballesteros in his prime as a resident favorite, and it so happened that on the occasion of his official retirement, here came another Spaniard to take his place. Sergio Garcia came dressed like a paint salesman Saturday, but he finished the round looking fully armed to move in for Seve. He was set up to pull the trigger.
You grieve at not being there. You miss the Scottish inconveniences. You miss the little hotel in Montrose, and the quite civilized evening meals. You miss the drive through the countryside down to Carnoustie. On the other hand, you’d be relieved to be out of range of the turmoil of Michael Vick. Memories came flowing ever so sweetly, until blocked out by return to reality.
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