Sad end to a sorry episode

As baseball’s acting commissioner in 1994, Bud Selig was welcomed to the job with a 232-day work stoppage and the first cancellation of the World Series since 1904. Little did he know (or maybe he did, but that’s another story) that the strike wouldn’t be the last controversy he’d have to deal with. Now that congress has gotten involved with the steroids investigation, it has raised the controversy of whether pro sports should be able to govern themselves. Based on the recent steroid controversy in baseball, it's become painfully obvious that professional sports leagues may require a bit of monitoring from the government.

One of the first questionable seasons happened in 1996 when Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs. In his previous seven seasons with the Baltimore Orioles, he only had 72 career homers. Though he admitted to using Creatine and protein, which are both legal, it’s awfully hard to attribute such a gigantic number to the use of legal supplements.

In 2002, the steroid controversy in baseball started moving onto sports pages daily. Bob Costas noted on the Dan Patrick Show that there had been nineteen 50-plus home run seasons between 1995-2002. Prior to 1995, only eighteen 50-homer seasons had occurred.

Then came Barry Bonds going for 73 home runs in one season as well as having his four highest home run after his 37th birthday. Where many home run hitters continue their success into their late 30s, it’s rare for a player to peak at that age. On top of the already mounting circumstantial evidence, Bonds came under more scrutiny when he and his personal trainer were linked to the Bay Area Lab Cooperative. BALCO was known to provide clients with Human Growth Hormone, Insulin and Trenbolone -- a hormone generally given to cattle. Bonds admitted to using steroids, but claimed that he was fooled and thought he was using Flaxseed oil for his arthritis.

Jose Canseco alleges in his book Juiced that Selig knew about the growing steroids problem in baseball after the strike but decided to let things go because baseball needed to bring fans back to the ballpark. With Mark McGwire -- who Canseco says he personally injected with steroids, banging out 70 home runs in 1998 -- baseball was beginning to make its comeback. Attendance had been down until Sammy Sosa joined McGwire in the chase for the single-season home run record. Being a business-minded commissioner, Selig avoided addressing the situation because it put more money in the pockets of he and his buddies.

Selig was forced to address the issue after the BALCO scandal and created the original steroid policy in 2005, in which a positive test equaled a 10-game suspension on the first offense. Only on the fifth positive test were players subject to being banned from baseball.

Many people argue that professional sports should be able to govern themselves and what happens on the field should stay there. Very rarely has the law become involved in sports, but in select cases, it has to. Such was the case when Marty McSorely decided to use his hockey stick as a weapon to nearly end Donald Bradshear’s life on the ice. McSorely was banned, as he should have been, but he also had to face the consequences of the law.

Now, people will say that the investigation could blur the lines of just how involved in sports the government can be. What if Congress isn’t pleased with a player going unpunished for breaking the rules, can they then step in to suspend or ban the player?

I highly doubt that any of that will ever become a problem. Though I don’t like the government getting involved with sports, I support the Congressional investigation 100 percent.

Selig has never been too concerned with the well-being of the game whether it be letting an All-Star game end in a tie or enacting his original joke of a steroid policy. This is the same man who considered getting rid the Minnesota Twins, a proud franchise with a history of doing things the right way.

He had ample time to clean up the game and give the fans a true representation of what the game is all about. It’s hard to say at this point if anything we saw recently in baseball was real, such as Roger Clemens being a dominant pitcher into his mid-40s or Barry Bonds’ head swelling to the size of a watermelon while he banged out 70 homers at age 37.

Though baseball has since enacted a tougher policy, none of that would have ever happened without Congress stepping in and telling Selig to clean up the game or they’d clean it up for him.
For the past 15 years, baseball fans have been fooled by what Selig allowed to happen right under his own nose in the pursuit of profits and bringing baseball into the national relevance.
When all the names drop in connection to steroids at the end of this, effectively rendering many players’ careers as irrelevant frauds, Selig’s name should drop too. Congress has to clean up the spilt milk that Selig let sour for too long.

To borrow a statement from one of the great commissioners in baseball history, this is the sad end of a sorry episode.

Thing is, it could have all been avoided.