WHEN I was a kid, my parents let me do as I pleased. I’m sure they suspected that I was up to no good; it’s not as if I didn’t leave plenty of clues. But they never said a word. And as long as I cut them in, they never asked where I got all that cash.
Then one day I got arrested, again, for stealing money.
In court, my father told the judge that I’ve “shamed the family.”
And everyone, including the judge, laughed at that one.
OK, none of that ever happened. My folks were tough, from the moment I could tell. As much I liked Twinkies, I couldn’t have them for breakfast. I wasn’t allowed, and I didn’t dare.
All our lives we’ve had to respond, one way or another, to logical restraints, to deterrents, threats, to fear of consequences. In time, we’re supposed to learn that there is no legitimate substitute authority for integrity.
Bud Selig last week condemned Alex Rodriguez for having “shamed the game.”
And I think Selig was trying to be serious, or at least taken for serious.
Too late. From the day MLB’s team owners replaced Fay Vincent with Selig as The Game’s authority figure, shameless money-making, the whatever-it-takes kind, became Selig’s mandate and mission.
Alex Rodriquez has “shamed the game”? Why wouldn’t he and likely hundreds of others who have used performance-, salary- and MLB-revenue-enhancing drugs? Who was going to stop them or even discourage them, Bud Selig, Commissioner?
The Commissioner, the team owners who appointed him, the heads of the players’ union were all wink-and-a-nod dirty business partners. Whose authority were Rodriquez and Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa afraid of? Selig’s? Donald Fehr’s? They were all connected at the money belt.
Selig’s only term of engagement was to make money, no value judgments asked for or wanted. And it still is.
Not one change during the Selig Era has lent itself to best-interests-of-the-sport integrity; only to making more money. From three-hour rain delays, to systemic ticket-scalping and price gouging, to Sunday afternoon games switched to Sunday nights for TV, baseball’s integrity, its common decency, has been for sale throughout Selig’s tenure.
What prevented Selig from unilaterally decrying drug use, from threatening players with his personal vow to bury anyone who did dirt to The Game?
Money, the one and only term of his agreement, that’s what.
Selig’s silence was paid for; the Commissioner’s Office during his stay in it has been nothing better than a counting house, a front. Rodriguez responded to all the tacit prompts that MLB provided. Even if it was Rodriguez’s nature to cheat and to lie, MLB nurtured his nature.
Consider that Baseball can suffer no scandal so calamitous that Selig’s job security is shaken. The team owners are still more than happy with him. In 2007, with MLB already exposed for its abandonment of integrity, Selig was given a $3 million raise, to $17.5 million.
Amazing, isn’t it? What does that say about those who hired him, sustain him and further enrich him? What does that tell us?
As a fresh scandal arrives daily, there hasn’t been as much as a peep to replace Selig, not from the team owners, not from the Players’ Association. Clearly, they’re all very pleased with the job he has done. While few stars of the Selig Era played clean, Selig remains the boss and with a raise.
What a racket. Does this sound like a legitimate enterprise or organized crime?
What would a team owner answer if, before a Congressional hearing, he were asked to explain why, with widespread dishonor and criminal conduct now attached to MLB, is Selig retained as Commissioner, and with a big raise, no less?
And let’s shelve the sentimental stuff, sports fans. Had Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron and hundreds of other stars played in the Selig Era, how many would have played clean? Were they going to be happy hitting 40 homers while others hit 65 and made five times more?
Why would they have played clean, fear of Commissioner Selig?
Selig didn’t do exactly what he was hired not to do. He provided no authority, no deterrents, no sense of shame or historical consequence, not for himself, not for the players and not for The Game. And fans, especially patrons, were regarded only as fools who would buy and suffer anything. And they still are.
Alex Rodriguez “shamed the game”? In defiance of whom? His sense of right from wrong should have been greater than Selig’s? And it should never be forgotten or forgiven that Selig, Fehr and the team owners together turned baseball’s clean players into suckers.
It seems an indisputable, growing and sustainable truth that Jose Canseco has done more for the integrity of Baseball than has Bud Selig. And it seems just as clear, year after year, that the team owners much prefer it that way.