AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > July > 21 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USSelig 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.
Permalink | Comments (33) | Post your comment | Categories: Braves / MLB, Mark Bradley
Comments
By Alan
July 21, 2007 11:34 PM | Link to this
Mark, you’re right on the money. Bud Selig is as wishy-washy an individual as ever lived. He’d make a great politician (no, not really), but he’s a lousy commissioner. I still can’t believe two of his absolute worst decisions, which, of course, are self-contradicting (aka “Bud-like”): (1) Halting the All-Star game 4 or 5 years ago before a winner could be determined; and then (2) just a couple of years later deciding that the All-Star game (an exhibition game, mind you) would henceforth “mean something” with the winning league gaining home-field advantage in the World Series. How about this moniker for Mr. Selig: Bud Lite.
By latisha
July 21, 2007 11:49 PM | Link to this
Once again, the white media is bashing the black man. Brotha Barry did it fair and square! Get off his back! White people cant stand the fact that brothas like Vick and Bonds are in the spotlight! Brothas are sleepin with white woman and whitey cant deal with it!
By falcon80
July 22, 2007 12:10 AM | Link to this
I dislike Bonds as much as most. That being said, his breaking of the “most hallowed” record in all of sports certainly deserves an amount of recognition. The commissioner should be there. Networks should show every at bat. Bonds should be congratulated. Maybe not with the fireworks and parades that Griffey (who can be just as surly) would have gotten and ARod may get, but accolades are surely due. I couldn’t, nor could Bradley, Schultz or the rest of the chattering class, take performance enhancing drugs and hit even one home run in the major leagues. When you look at Bonds’ numbers that don’t include HRs, they are staggering. MVPs, OBP, Gold Gloves, Slugging %, walks, etc. I think the man deserves a little more respect than his ingrateful, boorish behind is getting!
By dale in newnan
July 22, 2007 12:42 AM | Link to this
you let the ghetto queen out?
By john
July 22, 2007 3:25 AM | Link to this
latisha = racist white man trying to incite hate and racism against black men.
By A-ville Ranger
July 22, 2007 3:58 AM | Link to this
Bradley You have the worst judgement of any writer I can recall.This isn’t about Bonds 21 year body of work.It’s about a record (the record)in baseball that he has cheated to achieve.Yes if you project his numbers from the obvious point he started roiding and dismiss all numbers that seem to be artificial you still have a 550 homer 500 stolen base career.That isn’t the issue and it’s amazing to me that it isn’t completely plain to you.Willie Mays,Frank Robinson,Eddie Mathews,Micky Mantle,etc.These were all great players who at the peaks of their careers were at least equal to Aaron in power numbers.Aaron holds the record though because he sustained his power numbers longer.So Barry cheated Hank and the sport,what’s so hard to grasp about that Mark ?
By Famous Amos
July 22, 2007 4:06 AM | Link to this
You racist black men. The last time I looked a good black man that did it fare and square holds the record. You just have to holler racist about everything John
By p
July 22, 2007 6:13 AM | Link to this
This selig - bonds “controversy” is purely a media driven issue that no one else give acrap about.
Wilbon is 100% eight.
By Georgia still racist
July 22, 2007 6:15 AM | Link to this
How is it making you white people feel that Barry Bonds could break the record against your beloved Braves.
By jd
July 22, 2007 7:13 AM | Link to this
From OJ to Ray Lewis to Vick… a long history of crime by african athletes. We have an epidemic on our hands! The afro athletes are out of control! The afro leaders like Jackson and Sharpton should speak out against this criminal behavior that is predominantly afro. We need a congressional investigation!
By Michael
July 22, 2007 8:18 AM | Link to this
Georgia stil Racist. All I can do is sit and laugh till I throw up. Maybe you should also tab Hank with the racist label beacause he feels the same way “whitey” does. Funny how you guys pick and choose what is racist and what is not.
By D-Cider
July 22, 2007 8:28 AM | Link to this
I have heard way too much about Selig and Bonds. Did Kuhn attend the game when Aaron broke the record? No. and the idiot Frick was the that insisted an asterick be placed on Maris’ record and that wasn’t removed for years. and jd is a knucklehead
By MariettaMG
July 22, 2007 9:38 AM | Link to this
In my opinion Barry cheated to get there. Hank did it the right way and had a great body of work for many years. Henry Aaron represents everything that is good about sports in the US. I think Bonds represents alot that is bad about sports. It is time for all the major sports to institute tough testing for performance enhancing drugs with severe penalties like a 1 or 2 year suspension vs a 4 game one.
By TampaBrave
July 22, 2007 9:46 AM | Link to this
The baby is being thrown out with the bathwater here. I love Hank but Barry has swung the bat. He has hit the ball. The ball went over the fence 753 times. Records of baseball must be honored. The more Bonds is chastised, the more it diminishes the game of baseball. I say Let it ride and wait to see if these investigations turn up anything. If they do, we can all watch the commish bring out a giant eraser on his head, get down on his knarly knees and rub his head on the record books.
By Beth
July 22, 2007 10:26 AM | Link to this
Latisha, go back to the ‘hood.
I can see both sides of the story, but the only problem is, you can’t prove retroactively when he started using performance enhancers, and to what extent such would have affected his home run hitting, you know?
It’s easier to give a song and celebratory dance to someone as personable and on-the-level as Aaron, but salty tho’ he be, he’ll still be knocking out Aaron’s record. If baseball’s Big Guns and etc. were so concerned about the legitimacy of such claims, they should’ve started testing back in the day to nip it in the bud. There’s no fair way to grandfather in such testing and sweep away the runs and such Bonds has accumulated… much as it pains me to write that.
Abso-fecking-lutely, Baseball can and should try to monitor performance enhancing drug use more effectively going forward, but they’ve done such a p** poor job to date that it isn’t fair to single out any one player or record.
Let Bonds be front page news for a day or two. Let him have his records in the books and on Wikipedia. Let ESPN and all o’ them talk about him for 15 minutes. Let the Giants thank him for continuing ticket sales even in the face of last-place division standing. Heck, give him a Mastercard: priceless commercial and a “I’m going to Disney World” commercial.
Don’t try and strip any of it away, but don’t add any extra admiration, either. The world ain’t stupid — he’s walking and talking like a (fortysomething-year-old) duck.
By Diogenes
July 22, 2007 10:27 AM | Link to this
Perhaps latisha really is a white male, saying these things just to stir everything up.
In which case, it’s just a joke.
Or perhaps latisha really is a black female, who really believes what she says.
In which case, it’s STILL a joke.
By Chris
July 22, 2007 10:27 AM | Link to this
The situation is that politics, business, and sports have no morals and honorable values anymore. At least that is what is seen and reported everywhere. Rasing a child in this world is hard because everywhere is corruption and scandle. The words honor and respect are the babies thrown out with be bath water. Al’s “JUST WIN BABY” mantra seems to be the “NEW AMERICAN DREAM.”
By Diogenes
July 22, 2007 10:30 AM | Link to this
Perhaps latisha really is a white male, saying these things just to stir everything up.
In which case, it’s just a joke.
Or perhaps latisha really is a black female, who really believes what she says.
In which case, it’s STILL a joke.
By J. P. Davis
July 22, 2007 11:02 AM | Link to this
Yes, Selig is a sniveling corporate dunce, but you’re forgetting about the Player’s Union who fought drug testing tooth and nail all during the time when ‘roids were on the rise.
By Alphonso
July 22, 2007 11:08 AM | Link to this
The media will not let this story go. Anytime a brother is in the spotlight the white media tries to bring him down. Latisha is right. Anytime I am out in public with my woman, she get stared at because she is white and I am a brother.
By Big Ed
July 22, 2007 11:10 AM | Link to this
Selig is a hypocrite. He and the owners are not blind. They knew players were using drugs. The bottom line was more important. Baseball had lost its excitement factor and homeruns brought it back. The players union is also to blame. It took Congress to break their grip on the testing policy. So here we are today taking sides on the issue when the people directly involved don’t care what you think. They are collecting the big checks and pulling in the big profits. Look at it a different way. The owners, players, and commisioner have held hands though the entire steroid era. Men of all colors worked together to dupe us for the sole purpose of lining their own pockets. As we spend time on this blog arguing about race the players and owners are laughing at us. They have us right where they want us. PAYING ATTENTION to the game we love and spending our money on the game we love. Can you say GOTCHA.
By TampaBrave
July 22, 2007 11:20 AM | Link to this
WELL SAID BIG ED.
Gotta go get my tickets. See ya
By Chris
July 22, 2007 11:39 AM | Link to this
How can this be racism?? AAron is black you big dummies. Bonds took roids and perhapsif he had treated fans and the media properly over the years we wouldn’t dislikehim as much
By Corey
July 22, 2007 12:00 PM | Link to this
Everyone says poor “Michael Vick” this and poor “Michael Vick” that. BULL!!! He’s a grown man and knows the diference between right and wrong. He knew how wrong and very cruel not to mention illegal it is to run dog fights. When this all came out all you heard was Vick saying how he knew nothing about it or had no knowledge of what was going on at that house. Oh, please. Now that he has been Indicted and there is evidence that not only did he know about it, but was a major figure in it he has clammed up tight. Basically he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I think that the book should be thrown at him. This is just one of a few black marks that the Falcons will have to deal with now, thanks to Michael Vick. I think that the NFL should suspend him from playing until this situation is resolved. If he is convicted which it looks like that might very well happen then 6 years in prison is not near long enough. I think they should double that sentence at the very least. Gee I remember RB Clinton Portis rushing to Vick’s defense when this all came out too. I think Portis needs to get his facts straight before defending someone like Vick again. This just made Portis look like a fool just like Vick has done to everyone who supported him when this first came to light.
By Lee
July 22, 2007 12:18 PM | Link to this
Who cares? There’s not much difference between professional football, baseball, basketball and wrestling. At least professional wrestling has the honesty to call it “sports entertainment.”
Too much money and too many egos have ruined professional “sports” and most of college sports.
But, as long as the lemmings shell out the buck$ for E$PN, they will continue to turn a blind eye to any behaviour as long as it brings the fans to the ballpark.
By David Duke
July 22, 2007 12:49 PM | Link to this
Mark, I agree with a lot of what you had to say. Baseball should have investigated steroid use long ago, identified, users, removed their records and them from the game. Baseball has been forever cheapened by this scandal and the crowning bit of larceny will be when Barry Bonds steals the record that Hank Aaron worked hard for. It’s an absolute disgrace!
By mountain jim
July 22, 2007 1:05 PM | Link to this
Well I guess I can throw away my Hank -715 ticket and commemorative handout now.
But I still have the memories of that night and how wild it was in (old) Underground Atlanta that night.
By Me
July 22, 2007 1:28 PM | Link to this
What does Michael Vick have to do with Barry Bonds breaking the homerun record? And of course Bud Selig is incompetent in that Happy Chandler sort of way.
By Plate Appearance
July 22, 2007 3:57 PM | Link to this
THE CONVENIENT COMMISSIONER
Great column Mark!
I’ve always felt that Selig is the ultimate hypocrite.
He continues to ban Pete Rose from baseball for gambling, something that Rose has now finally admitted to and has been penalized long enough for.
Yet for all steroid years in baseball under his so called “watch” as commissioner, Bud turned a conveniently blind eye, while ascribing no blame to himself.
So while effectually giving himself a pardon for his complicity in steroids, he refuses to pardon Pete Rose.
How can someone who has little integrity himself, continue to stand for the integrity of the game, as Bud constantly portrays himself as doing.
Bud is as much responsible for the illegitimate home run record Bonds will soon have, as Bond is — perhaps more so, as Bud allowed steroids to be a part of baseball in the first place. Yet Bonds takes all the heat while Bud takes little.
Thanks Mark, for sends some rightfully deserved heat Bud’s way. May Bud be enshrined with Bonds in illegitimacy as the convenient commissioner!
By bfan54
July 22, 2007 4:48 PM | Link to this
Mark, You are one-for-three in my book. You’re assessment of Bud Selig is a line-drive base hit up the middle. But as is the case with the broken clock being right twice a day, Selig got it right on the Bond’s thing. He has no realistic authority to declare the record “bogus” - too unilateral - but at the same time he is doing what the rest of us are doing: “disrespecting” in some obvious, but unspoken way. Sorry, too, that you get nothing for your time at bat in your remarks suggesting that the “proof” of Barry’s juicing remains to be seen “someday”. Where is it written that one requires a criminal court conviction to be satisfied that he was doing this. His trainer sits in jail rather than “authenticate” his handwritten diary entries and testify fully to what even Bonds admits: i.e., the “clear and the cream”. Presumption of innocense is a legal fiction designed to force “the state” to prove beyond a reasonable doubt a “crime”. Mark, we aren’t the government, and nobody in sports is concerned here with proving a crime, we are speaking of a baseball record for God’s sakes. In this arena, his refusal to discuss it, does indeed raise an inference of guilt.
By Ralph
July 23, 2007 12:15 AM | Link to this
Vick and Bond, both no matter what they do will always be a couple of losers. Vick, has gotten away with more things and stay out of jail because he’s a football player, that in itself is sick and watching living things killing each other for the sport of it, then killing them in cold blood, is even sicker. Bond, there’s a real laugh for a baseball player, the only thing he is going to break is his bat, because there are only two home run kings, The Babe for the first part of this 20th Century and the Hank for the final and only portion of the 20th Century. The record for the 21 Century will never be broken by Barry Bond. Bud Selig doesn’t have to presides over Bond counterfeit home run record, if he feel there is a suspicion that this player was on a steroids cream that made him stronger than your normal player and maybe added about 135 homers to his record, and it will come out sooner or later that the man was in the cream. Let’s stop wasting time with these two clowns and kick them out of the sports. If Bond gets away clean, than players like Conseco and others, who were man enough to admit they took steroids should be vindicated.
By GermanBravesFan
July 23, 2007 1:37 AM | Link to this
If Bonds is innocent, why is his personal trainer STILL in prison, one year later? I wonder how big is “bonus check” will be after he gets out of prison!
If there was nothing to hide, why won’t Greg Anderson testify?
By A-ville Ranger
July 23, 2007 3:52 AM | Link to this
Georgia still racist——Last I saw Aaron was a black man.If you have to be an a-hole and a cheat like Bonds to qualify as black in your mind,perhaps you are the racist.