Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is seriously considering reinstatement for banished former player Pete Rose.

Lobbying for the move began five years ago but died when Selig became convinced Rose was not “reconfiguring” his life, the newspaper report said, part of the late commissioner Bart Giamatti’s demands on Rose when he was ruled ineligible.

“I think a lot of the guys feel that it’s been 20 years now for Pete, and would lean toward leniency and time served,” an unnamed Hall of Famer said, according to the Daily News. “If he had admitted it in the first place and apologized way back then, he’d probably be in the Hall by now.”
If Rose were to become eligible, it stands to reason he would have to be voted into the Hall of Fame by the 65 living members that make up the Veterans Committee.

Inclusion on the writers’ ballot expires after 15 years, but Rose has never appeared on their ballot except by write-in.

“I know there are still guys who feel strongly against him,” said another Hall of Famer, according to the report. “And I don’t know if that would change even if Selig clears him.”

This might be like comparing apples to oranges, but to me, players using steroids is 10 times worse than betting on baseball when you’re a manager. I’m not justifying what Rose did, but compared to what these selfish players did in the steroid era, “Charlie Hustle� should get a reprieve.

Gambling never helped Rose accomplish what he did on the field. Was he a scumbag for gambling on games he was managing? Yes. But he would be getting into the Hall of Fame based on what he accomplished as a player, which was (in short) quite a lot.

Bud Selig wants a rule changed that allows suspended MLB players to sharpen up in the minor leagues before their suspensions are over. The latest example of this rule came this year when outfielder Manny Ramirez was able to play in the Dodgers’ minor league system before his 50-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance was up.

“I believe that should be changed,” Selig said Tuesday during a one-hour question-and-answer session with the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. “Their logic was OK — look, guys get hurt, they can go out on rehab, and so on and so forth. But I think that’s something we need to really change in the next labor negotiation.”

The current rules are in place through December 2011. Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president of labor relations, said management will not ask for a rules change before then.
“I’ll let them work that out. I don’t want to do our negotiating here,” Selig said. “But it’s 50 games and then go do what you got to do to get back into [shape].”

For one of the first times in the history of my existence, I actually agree with Bud the Slug.

If a player is suspended, he should have to serve the full length of that suspension before he’s allowed to partake in baseball on the major or minor league level. I was vilified by a couple of readers in this article for criticizing this rule, but it’s amazing how people don’t find a player being allowed to sharpen up in the minors (while they’re suspended mind you) a ridiculous concept. I understand that it’s baseball’s rule, but it’s a dumb freaking rule.

It’s like sending a kid to time out in the corner for 15 minutes, but for the last five minutes, he gets to play with Legos so that he’s ready to get back to building a Lego house with the other kids after his 15 minutes have been served.

According to Phil Rogers of the Chicago Tribune, baseball commissioner Bud Selig is upset that names from the 2003 list of players who tested positive for banned substances are being leaked to the media.

Apparently Selig and others around Major League Baseball believe that a lawyer with the U.S. Attorney’s office (either past or present) ignored a court seal in order to give Sammy Sosa’s name to Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Daily News, who reported yesterday that the slugger was on the ’03 list.

I don’t blame Selig for being peeved that someone is leaking names that were supposed to be kept anonymous. After all, the only reason the player’s union agreed to the ’03 drug testing was because the players who tested positive wouldn’t be punished and because their names would never be released.

That said – give…me…a…break. If Selig wants to be upset with anything, how about he get upset with himself, the owners and the player’s union that allowed us to get to this point. He turned a blind eye to the steroid issue and now he wants to play victim. I guess he has to put on this little front about being mad about the leaks in efforts to settle down the player’s union, but he has nobody to blame but himself for this mess.

What Selig should do is go back on his word to the player’s union and release the rest of the 104 names on that 2003 list before the media does. A-Rod and Sosa’s names have already been released – how much longer until more names are announced? If Selig thinks that the media is going to stop digging, he has another thing coming. He may anger the players and the union by releasing the names, but it’s well past time for people to start taking responsibility for what has happened to the game of baseball.

Joe Posnanski of SI.com wrote an interesting piece about why the MLB draft doesn’t work as a popular television event.

1. The vast majority of players drafted will never get close to the big leagues. Take the 1994 draft … 15 years ago. There were 287 players taken in the first 10 rounds, and 190 of them — two thirds — did not get a single at-bat or throw a single pitch in the big leagues.

2. Even the players who DO make it will not make it for years. If the NFL Draft is, as the cliché goes, like getting presents on Christmas morning, well, the baseball draft is like getting a savings bond from your grandmother that will mature when you turn 18.

I love the analogy Posnanski used in his second point.

Yesterday I DVR’d the MLB draft and was actually looking forward to watching it. The MLB Network had hyped the event up for a couple of weeks and being a Giants fan, I was excited to see who’d they take at pick No. 6.

But once Bud Selig (who was awful, by the way) read Zack Wheeler’s name at pick six, I realized that I could care less about the rest of the first round. Unless you’ve lived under a rock the past couple weeks, you knew that the Nationals were going to take San Diego State pitcher Stephen Strasburg with the top pick and there was a good chance the Mariners would select North Carolina’s Dustin Ackley (arguably the best position player in the draft) at No. 2. So outside of hearing whom your favorite team picked, there wasn’t much excitement to the draft.

Posnanski is right – the MLB draft as a televised event doesn’t work. I applaud MLB for trying to make the event even a smidgen as popular as the NFL draft, but there just isn’t enough quality substance in the end. As Posnanski points out, most (and that’s not an exaggeration) of the players drafted in the first couple of rounds will never see the big leagues and even if they do, as a fan you have to wait three to four years before that happens. By that time, most casual fans have forgotten where those players came from.

Again, I think it’s great that baseball has embraced the idea of making the draft more of an event. But the reality is that I would rather watch the entire third round of the NFL draft than just one pick in the first round of the MLB draft. And I think others feel the same way.

Miguel Tejada was sentenced to one year of probation for misleading Congress about the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle writes that Tejada only regrets getting caught.

Nice going, Miggy. Way to represent The Good Guys.

Incidentally, who decided a $5,000 fine was any way to punish a guy making $13 million? Couldn’t the feds have ordered Tejada to pay whatever the government spent proving he’s a liar?

Anyway, about eight seconds after Tejada’s plea-bargain agreement was announced, the Astros issued a statement saying how happy they were to have this whole thing behind them.

In other words, let’s all forget that this guy is a cheat and that we got fleeced on this trade.
As for Tejada, he hasn’t exactly been forthright. He has confessed to what he got caught doing and nothing more. And there appears to be more there.

He played the contrite card when he showed up at spring training until someone asked about his use of steroids and HGH.

He bristled and said he wasn’t going to talk about it. Now that’s coming clean.

He doesn’t have to admit anything. The Mitchell Report does it for him. It’s right there on page 201 along with photo copies of checks to ex-teammate Adam Piatt for $3,100 and $3,200.
Piatt said he provided Tejada with steroids and human growth hormone, but he has no way of knowing if Tejada actually used the stuff.

Unfortunately Justice is right and even more unfortunate is that this is the way it’s going to be when it comes to the steroid era in baseball. The players that used will deny or only own up to what they were caught with. The owners will continue to look the other way and hide under the umbrella that is Bud Selig. And Selig will continue to act like the victim in all of this.

The players, owners and Selig will continue to ask to move on. And eventually, the fans will probably oblige because we’re not going to stop going to the parks.

Bud Selig wants to remind everyone that this whole steroid issue in baseball isn’t his fault.

“I don’t want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn’t care about it,” Selig said. “That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I’m sensitive to the criticism. The reason I’m so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we’ve come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.”

“I’m not sure I would have done anything differently,” Selig said. “A lot of people say we should have done this or that, and I understand that. They ask me, ‘How could you not know?’ and I guess in the retrospect of history, that’s not an unfair question. But we learned and we’ve done something about it. When I look back at where we were in ‘98 and where we are today, I’m proud of the progress we’ve made.”

Selig said he pushed for a more stringent drug policy during the labor negotiations of 2002 but ultimately settled for a watered-down version out of fear that the players association would force another work stoppage.

“Starting in 1995, I tried to institute a steroid policy,” Selig said. “Needless to say, it was met with strong resistance. We were fought by the union every step of the way.”

Bud Selig the victim – that’s rich.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig apparently isn’t ruling out the idea of stripping Barry Bonds of the home run record and giving it back to Hank Aaron.

For the first time Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has said he would consider a move to strip Barry Bonds of his record for all-time home runs, according to a report.

Christine Brennan of USA Today called on Selig to alter baseball’s record book and reinstate Aaron as the official record-holder for the most career home runs. Aaron hit 755 in 23 seasons. Bonds broke Aaron’s record in 2007, and with his career seemingly over, he has 762 in 22 seasons.

In a telephone interview with Brennan on Wednesday, Selig said of altering the record book: “Once you start tinkering, you can create more problems. But I’m not dismissing it. I’m concerned. I’d like to get more evidence.”

Attempts to reach Selig and Aaron on Thursday evening were unsuccessful.

Not to rain on anyone’s parade here because there’s nothing I’d love to see more than the home run title go back to its rightful owner, but Selig can’t do anything to the record with Bonds never officially being tied to steroids. We can speculate all we want, but Bonds has never officially tested positive for any performance-enhancing drug and even if he did, there was no penalty against players using steroids until 2004. (We can all thank the previously mentioned Bud Selig for that.)

That said, if Selig were able to reinstate Hammerin’ Hank as the rightful owner of the home run record, then maybe it would be a small step in bringing purity back to the game of baseball, which has been dragged through the mud over the past decade. Then again, with this seemingly daunting task left in Selig’s hands, we can probably forget about the record ever going back under Aaron’s name.

It’s time to look ahead to 2009 and play a little Nostradamus.

Last year, we predicted that God would anoint the “Devil-free� Rays World Series Champions (ding!), that Brett Favre would play another year or two (ding! – sort of), that Isiah Thomas would be canned (ding!), and that Kobe would be playing for a new team by the trade deadline…

Granted, that last one didn’t come true, but how were we supposed to know that the Grizzlies would trade Pau Gasol to the Lakers for an unproven rookie and a bag of peanuts? Our occasional inaccuracy isn’t going to keep us from rolling out another set of predictions – some serious and some farcical – for 2009 and beyond, including President Obama’s plan for a college football playoff, Donovan McNabb’s new home and the baseball club most likely to be 2009’s version of the Tampa Bay Rays.

Read on, and in a year, we guarantee* you’ll be amazed.

*This is not an actual guarantee, mind you.

Don’t miss the other two parts of our 2008 Year-End Sports Review: “What We Learnedâ€� and “What We Already Knew.â€�

Michael Vick will play for the Oakland Raiders next season.

Once NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell allows suspended quarterback Michael Vick to re-enter the league, let’s be honest, there’s really only one team that will take a shot on the convict: the Oakland Raiders. Sure, the Raiders would have to possibly give up a draft pick because Vick will still technically be property of the Falcons, but with Matt Ryan on board, Atlanta would probably be willing to give Mikey up for a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos…snack size. With Vick on board, JaMarcus Russell could shift to tight end or full back or offensive tackle or something. Or, Vick could play wide receiver! Or running back! Think of the possibilities! The Oakland Raiders will be the most unstoppable team in the league! That is, of course, until Vick gets the itch for his old hobby. – Anthony Stalter

The Nationals and Pirates become the official AAAA teams of their respective divisions.

After finishing at or near the bottom of the division since the franchise’s move from Montreal, Major League Baseball executives analyze the entire Washington Nationals player system and conclude that they have no chance of fielding a competitive team in the near future. In the boldest decision of his tenure, Commissioner Bud Selig demotes the team’s Major League roster to AAAA status, a phrase long used by baseball personnel to describe players that are too good for the minors but not good enough for the majors. In an added twist, Selig designates that the team’s assets are fair game for all four remaining teams in the National League East, as a means of creating parity. In order to keep the number of teams even in each league, Selig also downgrades the Pittsburgh Pirates, losers of 94 or more games since 2005, to AAAA status as well. It will be six weeks into the regular season before an NL East team claims any of these former Pirates or Nationals. – David Medsker

Barack Obama will have a plan in place for a college football playoff by 2016.

He has already spoken out twice in favor of an eight-team playoff format for college football. Granted, there are more pressing concerns for the President-elect – the economy, the war in Iraq and a forward-thinking energy policy, just to name a few – but there’s no reason that Obama can’t appoint a “Playoff Czar� to get the conference presidents and the bowl organizers together to hash out a system that works for everyone. Are the bowls worried about losing money? Rotate the semifinals and the final amongst the four bowl cities. Are the conferences worried about losing money? They shouldn’t be – the ratings for an eight-team playoff would dwarf the ratings the current system is getting. And better ratings means more money. This is something that 85%-90% of the population can agree on, and that doesn’t happen often. Mark our words – President Obama will make it happen, especially if he gets a second term. – John Paulsen

This is when the baseball season is really interesting—while no games are happening and speculation flies around about who will be changing uniforms and shifting the balance of the sport’s power. It sure beats watching a nine-inning game that goes on for four hours or more.

So the two big names that are free agents and will be courted heavily are CC Sabathia and Manny Ramirez. Forget the fact that commissioner Bud Selig cautioned teams about forking over too much money in a slow economy. Those two guys are going to rake in the cabbage either way, because teams will bid for them at ridiculous numbers. So far, the Brewers, Yankees and Angels seem to be the first in line to make a run at CC, and Manny’s agent, Scott Boras, had a 90 minute conversation with Dodgers’ GM Ned Colletti on Tuesday, but that pretty much means nothing. Still, the Dodgers owe their fans an offer to Ramirez, even if Boras is looking for a 5-6 year offer.

On the trading block, would you believe Tigers’ slugger Magglio Ordonez? The Tigers reportedly have enough holes to fill that they are willing to part with one of the game’s premier hitters to do so. That kind of deal has Yankees written all over it.

Two players whose team option was not picked up were the Yankees’ Jason Giambi and Dodgers’ Brad Penny. For all the talk about Giambi and steroids, the guy did hit 32 homers in 2008 and still has some pop as well as the penchant for bad mustaches.

Though the Mets need bullpen help more than anything, they are talking trade with Tampa Bay for starter Andy Sonnenstine. The Mets are also talking like they will not be bringing back Aaron Heilman, which is about as good a move as any trade to acquire a player.

Finally, free agent Ken Griffey may be heading back to Seattle, and pitcher Derek Lowe may be headed back to Boston. Stay tuned…..

Here’s what sports columnists are saying around the country on a variety of topics:

- Mike Celizic writes that Bud Selig is not cut out to be MLB’s commissioner. (NBC Sports)

- Joe Henderson wonders aloud if this year’s World Series could get any worse. (St. Petersburg Times)

- Hugh Falk lays out Part 1 of his blue print on how to fix the BCS. (RealClearSports.com)

- Johnette Howard writes that Jerry Jones is running the Dallas Cowboys into the ground. (Newsday)

- Bill Simmons hands out his predictions for the 2008-09 NBA Season. (ESPN.com)

- Cedric Golden says that the San Antonio Spurs’ title window has already closed. (Austin American-Statesman)

- Dave Kriger notes that a fixed site for future World Series would make more sense. (Rocky Mountain News)

- Drew Sharp says the Lions should start second-year quarterback Drew Stanton on Sunday. (Detroit Free Press)

- Peter King notes that we should expect the NFL Replay Rule to be tweaked. (Sports Illustrated)