To paraphrase a newly elected Cooperstown man, Bud Selig has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and nothing is real in this world.
Yes, on the very same week that Bill King deservedly, albeit belatedly, won the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting excellence and will be honored at baseball’s formerly holy temple, the man who got his hands dirty in 1980s collusion, a 1994 strike and presided over the Steroid Era until public opinion, Congress and shame forced an era of drug testing, will go in alongside him.
Bleccch.
Look, I know the MLB Players Union had as much to do with the steroid era as the greedy owners and Commissioner who looked the other way, but that does not mean this 16-person committee that voted Bud Selig into Cooperstown gets to conveniently pick and choose the heroes of those drug-addled years.
This 16-person committee, the so-called “Today’s Game Era” committee, is akin to the same group that put another steroid-connected non-player, Tony La Russa, in last year. They’re now acting as a floating body of king-makers. The 600-plus Baseball Writers Assn. of America, which wrestles mightily with the questions of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, obviously uses a different standard than this small room of power-brokers, and now the HOF is even more of a mess than it was just a few years ago.
The argument for Selig goes, I’d imagine, like this: Created post-strike labor peace. Oversaw era of 22 new stadiums. Left game with valuation of $10 billion.
With an emphasis on the $10 billion.
It’s baseball’s version of crony capitalism.
And it’s not good enough to overshadow the blight of Selig’s reign.
As Howard Bryant so eloquently wrote on ESPN.com, Selig is the man who sat in St. Louis in 1998 on the night Mark McGwire passed Roger Maris on the single-season home run list, and called it a “renaissance.”
Three years later, he blew off Barry Bonds’ march to 73, and chewed through his tweed blazer when Bonds passed Henry Aaron on the all time list. The difference? Selig claimed not to know anything medicinal was going on when McGwire and Sammy Sosa were forearm-bashing their way to glory, but was disgusted by Bonds in the post-“Game of Shadows” era. Pardon me while I ralph all over my keyboard.
Double standard much, Bud?
Like I said: Bleccch.
At the very least, in my most generous take, I’d say hold off on any Selig enshrinements until time passes and history judges the Steroid Era. That’s the argument against Bonds and Clemens, right? Selig shouldn’t be treated any better.
And in my least generous mood, I’d say it’s a joke that Selig gets a pass while Bonds and Clemens serve their time outside Cooperstown’s pearly gates. The stain of that era is on all the participants. You don’t get to pick and choose — unless you’re some special 16-voter group that forces a baseball error on all of us.