Probably like most American males these days I’ve been following the aftermath of the revelation and then confession that Alex Rodriguez used steroids between 2001-2003. A-Rod isn’t the first athlete to admit to using steroids, Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte are notable examples of players who were willing to come clean. As much as I am ashamed of all the players in Major League Baseball who have used steroids or Human Growth Hormones, I am more ashamed about the players, managers, owners and league officials who are pointing their fingers away from themselves.
On ESPN.com there is an article that says “Selig: Don’t Blame me for ‘roids.” In it, Selig announces, “I don’t want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn’t care about it…” Well Mr. Commissioner, who are we to blame then for allowing this to become such a problem? During the early decades of the last century Baseball suffered an epidemic of players throwing ball games for money and often players, managers, owners and league officials who knew what was going on did nothing to stop it. It wasn’t until the whole thing blew up in their faces in the midst of the 1919 world series that the owners decided to create the office of the commissioner of baseball. The owners and both American and National League officials attempted to pass the buck. Ban Johnson, then president of the American League, decided to keep his name clean by launching an investigation into the series that was widely said to have been thrown.
Today we live in a world where baseball players are once again trying to get an edge. Owners and league officials wanted nothing to do with blowing the whistle on the problem of steroids because they were producing exactly what Bud Selig wanted: higher scoring games. Babe Ruth made it evident that people love home runs, and there has never been a more prolific period of home run hitting by a larger group of players than now. Those home runs brought people into the stadium after the 1994 strike ended the season and shortened the ’95 season. Of course Bud Selig didn’t blow the whistle on something that now appears to have been the worst kept secret in the baseball world. He is the commissioner of a Major League Baseball that is seeing more popularity, more revenue than any other era in the game’s history.
I was saddened to see Selig’s words when he tried to pass the blame onto someone else. President Truman once said, “The buck stops here,” and he meant it. Selig doesn’t grasp this concept; everything that goes on in the game of baseball is ultimately going to be placed on him. He is the end of the line, no one is higher in the game of baseball than the Commissioner. He needs to man up and accept the responsibility that it was under his leadership, greed and ambition that steroids were allowed to go unchecked for a decade while his and the owners’ coffers were padded.
