Right Nickname, Wrong Reason

A few weeks ago, former New York Yankees manager Joe Torree caught some heat from the local New York newspapers for supposedly telling Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci, in the context of a book Verducci just released about the Yankees that Alex Rodriguez’s teammates sometimes referred to him as A-Fraud.

It turns out that righteous indignation of those who disagreed with that characterization was a tad premature. Over this past weekend Sports Illustrated spilled the beans on Rodriguez’s use of steroids. On Monday, Rodriguez told ESPN it was true and that, in fact, his illegal drug use went on from 2001-2003. That means, at the very least, his MVP of 2003 was indeed a fraud along with any and all of his accomplishments during those years.

On some level, this “news” falls into the category of dog bites man. There have been too many of these same sad, pathetic stories about the sport’s pseudo superstars for this “news” to qualify as anything more than just another example of a once-decent reputation being tossed onto an ever-expanding scrap heap. But on other more significant levels, the revelation that the highest paid ballplayer did more than just dabble in steroids is more damaging to baseball’s flagging reputation than the Mitchell Report of a few years ago.

Maybe you can take all of this as a sign that the baseball season has officially begun. It used to commence with the pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training. Now it begins with the latest report of someone testing positive for steroids. But in truth, the Sports Illustrated report and the Rodriguez-come lately admissions have already rendered another baseball season as suspect. Explain to me again why baseball commissioner Bud Selig is worth $17.5 million a year?

It’s hard to know how much of a steroid abuser Rodriguez really was or still is. In the interview with ESPN, Rodriguez admitted he lied to Katie Couric and CBS when he claimed last year he never used the drugs. You don’t suddenly regain credibility by admitting you’re a liar. It may be that his drug use only covered the period 2001-2003, but we’ll never really know unless he’s forced, again, to face another outing of a positive drug test.

There is no question that Rodriguez hopes that the ESPN interview will help salvage what’s left of his reputation. He certainly tried his best to come across as contrite and sincere. But let’s not forget he also came across as sincere in the Couric interview with 60 Minutes. All that means is that he’s a 6-tool player, having established his latest skill, the ability to fake sincerity.

Besides, why should anyone believe that this time he’s telling the truth? It’s not as if he came clean of his own volition. He had no choice. Examine his words in his interview with ESPN. He claims he stopped using steroids in 2003 after he hurt his neck in spring training and had a chance to take a measure of his life. Where’s he been for the last six years then? At any point prior to Sunday he could have taken the brave step forward, admitted his wrongful conduct and pledged to work on eradicating steroids at every level of sports. That would have bought him some good will. The fact that he did not is the height of selfishness and not, as he suggested, the act of a person who has grown beyond the immaturity and selfishness of his youth.

Without giving Rodriguez any sort of a pass on this, it is true that he is far from the only responsible person here. Start with the $17.5 million man, Selig. The fact that this stench still lingers is all the proof anyone needs that he is abjectly unqualified to be the commissioner of anything more complicated than motorized bar stool racing. Selig’s inability to control this situation, to exercise the kind of leadership that a salary like he earns commands, is the major reason why this issue hangs around like an out of work brother-in-law. Selig simply refused to stand up to the union and his fellow owners and shut the game down for as long as necessary until his sport was not only clean but the model for every other spot.

And speaking of the union, they are every bit as complicit at soiling the game in their misguided effort to protect drug abusers. This issue has never been about due process or Constitutional rights. Hiding under the flimsy protection of a collective bargaining agreement that has been slanted in their favor for far to long, from the union’s perspective this has always been about allowing abusers like Rodriguez to enjoy the ill-gotten fruits of their talents in order to raise the salaries of everyone else in the sport. If that means sacrificing the long-term health of the players they claim to represent, so be it. If that means placing every game and every accomplishment under a skeptical eye, so be it. It’s not their job, after all, to care about the game only the players.

It’s almost laughable that the union, particularly Donald Fehr and Gene Orza, are coming under scrutiny now as a result of the Rodriguez matter. These two have been Exhibits A and B for all the wrong reasons for far too long. But like cockroaches scurrying under a newly shined light, the Rodriguez affair has turned into an every-man-for-himself exercise.

To understand this aspect, it is necessary to also understand how the Rodriguez test results came about in the first place.

In 2003, (yes, 2003 and not 1974) baseball still wasn’t punishing steroids users. An agreement was in place that if more than 5% of the active players tested positive for banned substances, then baseball could implement punitive measures against players testing positive in subsequent years.

To what should be no one’s surprise, well in excess of 5% did indeed test positive in 2003. Let’s remember, too, that the penalties that went into effect were hardly much of a deterrent. It wasn’t until Congress got involved in the wake of the Mitchell Report that baseball and the union, under the pointed threat of losing their precious anti-trust exemption, toughened their program. Once the 2003 season ended and the number of positive tests confirmed, Orza, the union’s chief administrator, had no reason to save the test results. But before he could destroy them, the federal government, investigating BALCO and Barry Bonds, had them subpoenaed. The union had no choice but to turn them over or risk even bigger problems. From there, eventually, the Rodriguez revelations were borne.

Interestingly, though, major league baseball doesn’t seem all that concerned that their number one marquee player got that way in part through steroids. They seem far more concerned that the union didn’t destroy the results in the first place. It’s akin to Tony Soprano yelling at Silvio Dante because a police officer found a body he disposed of. Focus not on the underlying crime but on the shoddy job you did covering it up.

Baseball officials also seem a little ticked that Orza allegedly was tipping off players, including Rodriguez, weeks in advance of drug tests back then. Orza denies the claim, as he’s done before, but really in context how is that denial even credible? All of this is just noise drowning out the real problem anyway. At some point someone will step out of self-protection mode and actually take not just responsibility but ownership for solving this problem.

Beyond the players, Selig and the Union, let us also not forget about the complicit owners like George Steinbrenner and his idiot son Hank as well as the Texas Rangers’ chief windbag, Tom Hicks. It was Hicks who gave Rodriguez the outrageous salary in the first place that supposedly put so much pressure on poor Rodriguez that he felt a need to turned to illegal drugs in order to live up to the demands of his new found riches. It was George Steinbrenner who then traded for Rodriguez after his fraudulent 2003 season and Hank who then re-upped with team Rodriguez for another 10 years at the modest sum of $27.5 million a season.

Its owners like the Steinbrenners and Hicks who helped create this culture in the first place by sending a message that other-worldly accomplishments, by however means achieved, were worth outlandish salaries. If it had only impacted their teams that would have at least contained the problem. But it didn’t. It’s a culture that took hold throughout the league and has created the economic disparities that exist today between teams.

It’s instructive that the Yankees official word on this is only that they are disappointed in Rodriguez. That’s a pretty muted response considering they were essentially defrauded not once but twice by Rodriguez and are still on the hook to him for well over $225 million over the next 8 years or so. It’s as if they had just lost millions to Bernie Madoff and just shrugged their shoulders. As a franchise, the Yankees have no convictions so wagging a public finger and scooting this under the rug seems appropriate for them.

But if the Yankees really were disappointed, they’d part ways with Rodriguez irrespective of the cost and without fear that any other team would sign him. Until the owners, collectively, take a stand against this, it will continue. They need to understand that as caretakers of the game, players like Rodriguez, Clemens and Bonds, have lost the privilege of the major leagues. They have abused the gifts they were born with and shown nothing but disdain for the fans and the sport itself.

Because this is America, however, Rodriguez will get his second, third, fourth and fifth chances and maybe a dozen more until he demonstrates that he can no longer hit home runs. But if fans really want to give Rodriguez the chances he doesn’t deserve, they ought to at least first demand something in return. Rodriguez admitted his drug use basically covered three seasons. Forfeiting his salary for the next three years and instead directing the money be placed in a foundation dedicated to the sole proposition of educating and training the youth of America on the pitfalls of drug use would be a good start.

Starting from Scratch

It would have been a surprise if the fans really did give a damn.

The relative lack of activity in the chat rooms, the various stories on fan reaction on television and in the newspapers all speaks to a huge wave of fan indifference about Senator George Mitchell’s report on the steroids era in baseball. The voice of one fan in particular, I think, well summed up what really is the issue. He didn’t care because he already figured most baseball players were cheating anyway.

And isn’t that, in the end, the most damning indictment of all? If fans truly think that the entire sport is tainted, what’s the point?

When the dust settles on all of it, it is rather doubtful, actually, that most fans will still hold the view that nearly every player was on the juice. But what no one can escape is the fact that the caretakers of major league baseball—the owners, the club executives, the players, their union, the agents, the national and local media—did such a lousy job with the privilege they were given, that it threatened the very foundation of the sport itself.

In my view, there really is only one answer: take a bulldozer to the sport and start from scratch. Kick out everyone and anyone who in any way is associated with the steroids era. Ban them from baseball permanently, like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose. And when I say everyone and anyone, I mean just that: the owners who still sit idly by while the likes of George Steinbrenner and his ilk whose insane quest to buy a championship year after year created such an economic upheaval that it encouraged players to cheat in order to grab a bigger pay day; every club executive, from the general managers to the towel attendants, who put their heads in the sand while the players they pampered, purchased, traded for or signed seemed to get bigger as if they were inflated by an air hose; every manager or coach who stayed cloistered in his office in order to avoid seeing the ugly realities taking place in his club house; any player who took the stuff and any player who looked the other way while his teammate was getting an injection; union leaders like Donald Fehr, Gene Orza and the rest of their minions who intentionally blocked a meaningful drug testing program until Congress threatened action; the reporters who were in those locker rooms every day, saw what was happening, heard the whispers and refused to do their jobs because they feared their access to the players would dry up.

You see, the Mitchell report is far more than just the names of the 70 or 80 ball players whose arrogance clashed with their stupidity when they not only associated with but actually befriended the various drug dealers and suppliers whose only job was to give them an unfair edge. The report is about all of us who actually find, or used to anyway, meaning in the sport itself now having that stripped away from them. Not only is it a virtual certainty that whatever results you may have seen on the field over the last 10-15 years are suspect, but there’s little comfort that anyone associated with baseball has the guts or the wherewithal to ensure we don’t have another 10-15 years of similar uncertainty, Commissioner Bud Selig’s predictable hand-wringing notwithstanding. That’s why you have to start from scratch.

Consider the fall out of just the last few days. In this corner you had the Roger Clemens camp, but not necessarily Clemens himself, issuing denial after denial, expressing outrage after outrage, and questioning the fairness of the process. But his attorney, Rusty Hardin, without any sense of irony, claimed his client had been denied a fair shake while hiding from the fact that Clemens was given every opportunity to participate in the investigation and refused, just like every other player, preferring instead to shout from the cheap seats after the fact. It’s the coward’s way out because it avoids actually having to tell the truth at the moment of truth. You can bet the mortgage that Clemens won’t pursue legal action even while claiming he was slandered because that, too, would force him to testify under oath about the allegations, putting him squarely in the sites of a perjury charge if he lied.

In another corner sat the pathetic talking heads of ESPN seemingly spending more time attacking the credibility of the accusers than in focusing on the overall message. In other words, it was just more of the same. When it is nut-cutting time, they’ll jump on the side of the players in order to ensure they can still do their jobs on a daily basis.

What they can’t hide from, though, is the fact that this story didn’t break on a single day. It was an era, for goodness sakes. It was literally years in the making. I don’t care how lousy of a reporter Peter Gammons might be. You mean to tell me, credibly, that in all the locker rooms he’s been in for all these years he never saw anything, ever? He didn’t see enough to make him want to follow a reporter’s instinct that maybe, just maybe, there is a story to tell? And that’s not to single out Gammons at all. Paul Hoynes, Sheldon Ocker and Terry Pluto, to name just three locals, have been covering major league baseball literally for decades and have been in those same locker rooms. Where were they when it mattered most? And that’s not to single out Hoynes of Pluto either. Every town with a major league team has their own versions of Hoynes, Ocker and Pluto. They were silent as well.

In still another corner sits the club owners and executives, exemplified by the likes of Houston’s Drayton McLane who said on Friday that he still plans on letting Clemens fulfill his personal services contract with the club, barring “real evidence” linking Clemens to steroids. In just that one statement, McLane couldn’t have sent a more powerful message as to what he thinks about Mitchell’s report.

But for the conveniently forgetful McLane, he should check out pages 167-175 of the Mitchell report. Clemens is mentioned some 82 times. The accusations couldn’t be more specific: Clemens’ personal trainer, someone to whom he is still inextricably linked, says he personally injected Clemens with steroids on several different occasions. That’s real evidence, enough so that the burden does shift to Clemens to prove otherwise since this is not, after all, a criminal proceeding. But Clemens refused to cooperate. End of story. Selig thanks you very much, Mr. McLane. Your fruit basket should arrive on Monday.

The rest of the corners in this story, and there are plenty more, are equally sordid. The truth is that it’s far easier to attack the source than to confront the reality of what they have had to say. So in that sense, the reactions of those directly involved are understandable. But that doesn’t make them right. Jose Canseco may be a terrible human being for any reason you want to think. But to this point he’s still viewed as an outsider, a disgruntled ex-ball player even as virtually every one of his accusations bears fruit. He’s batting a thousand and he still hasn’t been sued.

But given the reaction to Canseco over these last several years, why then should we reasonably think that the reactions to the accusations made by Kirk Radomski or Brian McNamee would be any different? The default thinking, which makes so little sense it could have been written by Lewis Carroll, is that that they are making all this stuff up because they were facing more severe criminal penalties if they didn’t tell the truth. Huh? The last thing a guy facing hard time wants is to face even more hard time for not telling the truth. But why let a little logic get in the way?

A corollary to all of this is that Radomski and McNamee were just telling Mitchell and federal prosecutors what they wanted to hear. Left unexplained is why anyone would actually want to hear that the greatest players in the history of the sport were cheaters? What’s the incentive in that?

Whether the Mitchell report will ultimately have some long-term positive impact won’t be known for years, but don’t hold your breath in the interim. Too many people with a vested interest in this are so deep in denial that they can’t even see the blood on their own hands. But for all the denial they’ll continue to muster, there legacy will always be that they helped ruin the very game they professed to love. Starting over, from scratch, is the least they can do now.