In 1992, when Alex Rodriguez was 17, MLB team owners jettisoned Commissioner Fay Vincent, apparently for serving too much as a best-interests-of-the game commissioner and not enough as a best-interests-of-the-owners commissioner.
After all, Vincent had firmly dealt with the most notable and notorious of team owners, George Steinbrenner, expelling him following Steinbrenner’s twisted attempt to “get” Dave Winfield by baiting Winfield’s part-time go-fer, the full-time pathetic, delusional — obviously — Howard Spira.
Among other issues, that likely chilled team owners, especially the Machiavellians who, in their other enterprises, were accustomed to being obeyed. The owners’ “no confidence” vote on Vincent was overwhelming, 18-9.
In Vincent’s replacement, Brewers owner Bud Selig, the other owners had just the right man: a best-self-interests-in-the-game guy, someone to serve as The Game’s chief financial officer, a bottom-liner, a debt-service manager, whatever it takes.
Unlike Selig, Vincent wasn’t the type to have had MLB float Fred Wilpon a $25 million “emergency loan” to aid Mets ownership after the Bernie Madoff mess. Vincent more likely would have demanded to know why a franchise was put in immediate peril through investments with a “You’re not allowed to ask any questions” con artist.
By 1996, the season in which hitters doubled and tripled previous home run outputs, it was abundantly clear something was very rotten in Denmark.
Pipsqueaks with pop guns had become mass-muscled action figures — more powerful than locomotives, able to hit opposite-field bombs by the dozens. From modest biceps suddenly emerged triceps.
Almost everyone recognized the stench. But if Bud Selig was one of them, he didn’t let on. Besides, there was nothing Commissioner Selig could do about it, because, it seemed clear, there was nothing he wanted to do about it.
Tickets, their prices jacked with Selig’s indulgence when the sluggers hit town —were being sold. TV contracts — local, national, national cable — were worth more than ever. Money flowed as if from a busted sewer.
Tim McCarver even wrote a book: “The Perfect Season: Why 1998 Was Baseball’s Greatest Year.” That was just after Mark McGwire hit 70 homers and Sammy Sosa, before he no longer could comprende English, hit 66. Barry Bonds, at 33, was just starting to fill out. At 36, he would hit 73.
And even to the career and financial detriment of clean players, Donald Fehr and his MLBPA went into their run-silent, go-deep accord with MLB. The hush money was too great.
It was explained to me by a since-retired MLB exec that Selig’s hands were tied by the collective bargaining agreement with the MLBPA.
Then why agree to an agreement that would leave The Game in disrepute? Why, that is, other than money? MLB’s integrity was negotiable?
And if Selig’s hands were tied, he wasn’t bound and gagged. Nothing prevented him, as MLB’s peerless authority, from unilaterally warning players who, like us and them, he knew what was going on, and that he would make the lives and legacies of drug-infused stars miserable if they persisted.
Nothing prevented him, except money.
A small but telling clue to Selig’s guardianship is that even after the Bonds/BALCO scandal hit — and hard — Selig allowed teams to jack ticket prices when Bonds and the Giants came to town.
And so MLB still is being poisoned by what it planted when Rodriguez was 17. That Monday’s Yankees-White Sox became a freak show — another follow-the-money freak show — was 20 years in the making.
Selig and the team owners, Fehr and his clean-guys-can-go-to-hell strategists never saw this day — these days — coming? Money can’t cure blindness, but it can cause it.
I’m no Rodriguez fan, but why is his money-first risk any more shameful than Selig’s? The first Drug Era asterisk I’d apply would be attached to Selig.
A-Rod reporting as silly as same-day return/suspension
ALEX RODRIGUEZ’S same-day suspension and season’s debut made for equally satire-proof news coverage.
A Ch. 4 News correspondent was sent to report from in front of Yankee Stadium. That the Yanks were in Chicago — absolutely nothing going on in front of Yankee Stadium — didn’t matter. Would’ve made more sense to have her stand in front of a pharmacy.
FOX News’ Shepard Smith reported that Rodriguez was expected to play that night’s game vs. the White Sox in “Wrigley,” where “every Cubbies fan will boo” him.
* What’s more stunning: Robinson Cano’s continued disinclination to run or that Yankees broadcasters finally have noticed what the rest of us couldn’t miss, starting, oh, four, five seasons ago?
It’s as if everyone finally was given permission; Michael Kay, Ken Singleton, John Flaherty, David Cone and even Suzyn Waldman no longer ignoring the obvious. Monday, when Cano jogged out of the box, turning a double into a sliding out at second, YES provided isolated tape of Cano doing the dog.
Still, Cano’s, er, doggedness, is mind-blowing:
Sunday in San Diego, Yanks down, two out, Cano on second, Alfonso Soriano — another jogger — on first.
Curtis Granderson lines a shot off the first-baseman’s mitt; the ball dies in short right. Cano is seen walk-watching to home.
If there’s a play on Granderson rounding first and he’s tagged out — a clear and present possibility — Cano would not have scored.
But what viewers couldn’t miss went unspoken on YES.
Yanks rival Chisox futility
WITH Mike Francesa off, Suzyn Waldman took over. Before Monday’s Yankees-White Sox opener, she declared the White Sox “just can’t hit.” In their next 28 innings against the Yanks, they had 36 hits.
➤In its first 10 minutes of PGA Championship coverage yesterday, TNT/CBS showed just two shots — both taken by Tiger Woods. At the time, Woods was seven behind leader Jim Furyk, but was listed first among those seven back.
* Although Michael Kay is known for reading any stat at any time, the one he recited Wednesday on YES — Robinson Cano “is the first Yankee to hit a go-ahead homer in the 12th inning or later against the White Sox since Thurman Munson did it in 1974” — had to have been read at gun point.
* Reader Daniel Meyer on our world gone nuts: “If Riley Cooper had beaten his wife or girlfriend, his Eagles’ teammates and the media would have been over it in a day.”
* As for Alex Rodriguez’s Monday return, reader Joe Dobbies writes that while he’s not the sharpest fan, he isn’t the dimmest: “I know that ‘suspended’ and ‘debut’ are not synonyms.”