WHAT A DOPE! Bud Selig’s legacy as commissioner will be tainted by drug scandals like Biogenesis, which involves Alex Rodriguez (left) and Ryan Braun (right). (
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When Jose Canseco released his infamous tell-all “Juiced” in 2005, Major League Baseball reacted by firing all of its cannons at Canseco. A vigorous public-relations campaign to discredit the dopey whistle-blower ensued, with everyone from Bud Selig to Tony La Russa to MLB vice president (and Canseco’s former general manager in Oakland) Sandy Alderson deployed.
How times have changed in baseball, and for the better — well, unless you’re Alex Rodriguez or a few other guys.
This year’s version of Canseco,
Biogenesis founder Anthony Bosch, sits as a star witness. Selig and his deputies have submerged themselves deep into the mud, a decision that looks to carry long-term impact for both the game and the near-retirement commissioner’s legacy.
“The only thing I can say to you about that, if you have a program that’s tough, a program that demands from all of your players who get tested a certain level of doing the right thing, then if there are problems with that, you have to then be aggressive in pursuing what went on, why it went on,” Selig said Tuesday, when he met with the Baseball Writers Association of America. “I think that, frankly, they are very much tied together. It’s one thing to say you have a tough program [and then say], ‘Well, we don’t really enforce it well.’
“We have left no stone unturned. I think it’s consistent with everything we do.”
Without positive urine tests to nail the suspects, Selig has authorized both the payment of witnesses and a fascinating legal strategy in which MLB sued Bosch (for supplying illegal performance-enhancing drugs to players) and then agreed to drop him from the suit in return for cooperation with baseball’s investigation. These tactics have helped produce strong non-analytical positive cases against alleged Biogenesis clients like A-Rod and Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun; suspensions now look most likely to be announced in a couple of weeks or so. On the flip side, they have given the accused players’ attorneys a method to attack Bosch and his fellow sleazy witnesses during any appeals hearings.
We’ll have to wait to fully evaluate the merits of this approach; Players Association executive director Michael Weiner told the BBWAA on Tuesday appeals hearings could start in September, meaning that actual penalties probably wouldn’t take place until 2014 unless a player accepts his punishment without a fight.
There is no doubt history heavily influences Selig’s philosophy. Both the history on which we can look back now and how the present will be regarded down the line.
Having overseen the game since 1992, Selig will forever be remembered in some corners as the “steroids commissioner” since we first fully comprehended the vastness of illegal PED usage during his reign. And the problem has occupied a good amount of his time and effort.
On this issue, he has evolved from disingenuous (he claimed to not know much of steroids until 1998, even though he was quoted about them in 1995) to apple-polishing (the Mitchell Report was little more than a gossip sheet designed to titillate Congress) to upfront and proactive. The Biogenesis investigation is fully legitimate because it’s being conducted within the parameters of the joint drug agreement, which was collectively bargained with the union. Baseball officials have become more street-smart and less naïve and their actions have the backing of many players.
By aligning himself with miscreants like Bosch, Selig runs dual risks. If most players win their appeals, then the commissioner could appear impotent against this plague which angers so many finger-wagging fans. If baseball wins the majority of the cases, then it will have whacked its own sport, taking a number of players off the field, in a way no other professional sport ever has.
Nevertheless, the rewards
justify the risks. Even in his worst-case scenario, in which A-Rod, Braun and others get away, Selig can say he tried to do the right thing. And if the suspensions stick, he will have proven his seriousness about keeping his game clean.
Selig plans to retire after next year — friends say he really means it this time, following myriad such proclamations that led only to contract extensions — and as much as he tries to wave it off, everyone knows Selig greatly values his
legacy. A history buff, he wants to go down as the best, most impactful baseball commissioner ever.
A-Rod, fittingly, will play a significant role in Selig’s legacy. Will he be to Selig what Pete Rose was to the late Bart Giamatti, the huge star brought down for a long (if not lifetime) suspension? Or will he join Roger Clemens in evading capture and refuting charges?
Either way, Selig and the game are better for their muddiness. We learn more by joining forces with the sleaze than by trying to pretend they don’t exist.
kdavidoff@nypost.com