The Coming Storm

With the general managers meetings taking place this week in Florida we should have some answers to the free agent questions in the coming days and weeks. Unfortunately all of the excitement that circles around trades and player acquisitions is about to be overshadowed by the coming report on steroid abuse by former U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell. It wont be pretty and you can bet that there will be some big name surprises. Unfortunately I would be willing to bet that the finger pointing will stop short of where the blame stems from...the commissioners office, and maybe even the White House.

In the years immediately following the strike baseball was in serious trouble, fans had left the game in droves and ratings were down across the board. Suddenly you saw the rise of players like Sammy "Corked Bat" Sosa and Mark "androstenedione" McGuire. You saw Barry Bonds go from a lanky player about to enter the twilight of his career, to a Mr. Universe-esq tiny headed power hitter. Records were broken, and some eyebrows were raised, but everyone was so happy to see baseball back that no one said a whole lot. That includes the commissioner. To think that he had no idea what was going on at the time is simply ridiculous. In fact Selig probably would have let the abuse go unchecked if not for the media finally stepping in and demanding answers. It wasn't just Selig who turned a blind eye, the owners did too. Frankly home runs were good for the game at that point, and nervous owners needed a way to draw fans back into the seats. One of those owners now lives in Washington and you'll notice has said very little on the subject.

Now we wait on the findings of the report and the subsequent disciplinary actions from Selig. Unfortunately the only ones who will be affected by this are the players and not the owners, or Selig himself who in fact owes all of baseball an apology for not putting an end to this sooner. By not outlawing performance enhancers earlier Selig has set a dangerous precedent. Higher and higher percentages of players and young athletes now feel that the only way to compete in the majors is to use some sort of supplement. Fines and suspensions won't change that, there will always be doctors out there willing to engineer a new gel that will evade detection. Reports serve the purpose of making it look like something is being done, but until the players, owners, and especially the commissioner makes a real efforts to stop the practice the steroid era will go on indefinitely. So before you judge players like Guillen and even Bonds too harshly, look who their enablers are.