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 – now that’s rich.
Just like we question how athletes don’t know what form of steroids they took, we should continue to question how Bud the Slug didn’t know that players in his league were using performance-enhancing drugs right under his nose. A parent isn’t going to know about every little thing hiding in their teenager’s room and Selig isn’t going to know about what every player in every clubhouse is taking.
But to hear him try and spin what has happened over the past decade into a positive is laughable. He knew something was going on, but he waited until the situation grew so big that he couldn’t hide it in his back pocket anymore to say something. Now he wants all of us to look at the progress he and baseball has made since 1998? Come on. He should have squashed this bug from the beginning, but instead he saw that home runs equaled asses in the seats and he took a calculated risk that this issue would never blow up the way it has.
But Selig does have a point – the blame needs to be spread out. The players union felt that steroid testing was a violation of the privacy of players. They created an unnecessary shit storm by allowing players to essentially take whatever they wanted without fear of punishment. The union tried to protect the prisoners and the prisoners turned around and started running the asylum.
And where are the owners in all of this? If Selig wasn’t ready to make a better stand at the top, the owners should have done something on the ground floor. But they too were lining their pockets, so they turned a blind eye as well. They also get the luxury of hiding behind Selig as he takes most of the criticism on this issue from the media and fans.
The fact of the matter is that Bud the Slug, the players, the players union and the owners are all at fault for this. All of them should be held accountable but instead, we get to hear Selig talk about how this wasn’t his fault and how players like A-Rod shamed the game. Please.
Johnny Damon speaks to the media today in Tampa following A-Rod’s presser: “Yeah he did some bad things. He took a steroid. Definitely do not condone that, at all, but there could be a lot worse things he could have been doing out there. He hasn’t done a crime. So there’s worse things that he could have done but you know I’ve known Alex since he was 15 and he’s always been super nice to me and so I’m going to support him and try help him through this time. (Reporter: Johnny, what would have been worse?) Murdering someone… There’s plenty of things that could be worse than what he did. (Reporter: In your mind, is what he did cheating?) For part time in his career, perhaps, but you know what, the pitchers that were facing him too at the time were doing it.”
