For all of the shortcomings that former Cleveland Browns’ general manager Phil Savage had, one thing he seemed to understand was the special bond between the fans and the players, particularly Browns fans. To that end, he went about trying to bring in players with a local connection; players who understood exactly what the Browns-Steelers rivalry meant.
One of those was certainly Joe Jurevicius, an unabashed Browns fan well before he ever became a pro football player himself. A local product through and through, except for that unfortunate stint at Penn State, Jurevicius represented everything Cleveland fans like in their players. He was loyal, hardworking, and not afraid to get his jersey dirty. He took on the unglamorous assignments that are so critical to moving the ball down field and has the body scars to prove it. When he made one clutch third-down catch after another, every fan celebrated with him as he thrust his arm forward as if he was the referee signaling for a first down. More than anything else, he was a winner.
Jurevicius, as fans well know by now, went under the knife for relatively routine arthroscopic surgery on his right knee after the 2007 season. But complications, mostly stemming from a staph infection he contracted, put him out of service for the entire 2008 season. He was released after the season and whether he’ll ever play again is questionable.
Though no longer on the team, Jurevicius still has the chance to help the Browns through the lawsuit he filed last week against his old team, the Cleveland Clinic and team physicians. It’s unlikely that the Browns and their lawyers see it that way, but by bringing the lawsuit Jurevicius hopes to, in part, expose what he no doubt believes is a cover-up by the Browns’ organization over the last few years with regard to staph infections suffered by the players. If he’s successful, it can only help the Browns in the long run. Sometimes the only way to help is with a sledgehammer.
In the suit, Jurevicius alleges that the Browns, despite representations to the contrary, did not properly maintain, disinfect or clean their therapy devices making it likely that he and, by proxy other players,would get a staph infection.
The particulars of Jurevicius’ lawsuit aren’t nearly as interesting as what is likely to come next. Since much of the lawsuit is premised on Browns officials, including Savage and former head coach Romeo Creennel allegedly misleading Jurevicius about the precautions the team had taken to rid its facility of staph, those same officials are going to find themselves on the hot seat having to answer difficult questions about what they knew and when they knew it.
Savage, in particular, undoubtedly will be the focus of some particularly grueling questioning by Jurevicius’ lawyers as topic one for them is going to be Savage’s bungling last year of Kellen Winslow’s medical situation, an incident that as much as anything led to Savage’s firing. Savage supposedly did everything he could to keep Winslow from revealing that he, too, was suffering another staph infection and then punished him for essentially going public with his concerns. Though not stated directly in the pleadings, this is the heart of the lawsuit. Savage claimed he was just trying to protect Winslow from, I guess, the media vipers. In actuality, Savage was just trying to protect Savage.
The Winslow incident, which Savage clearly tried to bury, was the first real shot across the bow of the team for their allegedly perfunctory efforts in keeping their players healthy. The Jurevicius lawsuit is the second. With a new regime in place, it will be easy for them to dismiss this lawsuit as old business. That would be a mistake.
While the old business is the Winslow incident, in a vacuum, the larger issue for Jurevicius and other players is how it plays into why, exactly, Jurevicius got staph. Did the Browns really take all the precautions they could to combat staph? Whether or not the relatively large number of staph infections by Browns’ players over the last year or two is a pattern or a coincidence will be a key to whether or not Jurevicius prevails in his lawsuit and whether or not there are other similar lawsuits in the team’s future.
But even if the lawsuit doesn’t result in any recovery for Jurevicius, it more than succeeds anyway if it brings a new-found focus on this problem Everyone involved, from the players, to the coaches to team officials are tired of dealing with this issue. But for all that weariness, it’s time for an actual solution to this problem to be found so that no more relatively minor injuries suddenly and unexpectedly transform into career-threatening injuries.
**
And the fall from grace continues.
Roger Clemens proving as inept at covering up his steroid use as he was proficient at throwing drug-induced fastballs, has taken still another whack to his flagging reputation. After being outed as a steroids user by his former trainer, Brian McNamee, during George Mitchell’s investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, Clemens loudly took the legal route to clear his name. It didn’t work.
In February, the judge hearing the lawsuit summarily dismissed it. The gist of the ruling was that McNamee, himself a target of the investigation, enjoyed immunity from such a lawsuit by virtue of his talking with governmental investigators from the Department of Justice and Mitchell. That McNamee would enjoy such immunity is Law School 101 and Clemens’ lawyers knew it. If cooperating witnesses in a governmental investigation can be sued for defamation for telling what they know, pretty soon there will be no such thing as a cooperating witness.
Not knowing when to say when, Clemens’ lawyers, no doubt at Clemens’ urging, asked the judge to reconsider the ruling. He did and slammed Clemens even harder than before, telling him sarcastically to sue the government if he really feels they overstepped theri boundaries in undertaking the investigation. He won’t.
The judge, helpfully.did tell Clemens that he could recast his defamation lawsuit by pointing not to what McNamee told the government but what he told Andy Pettitte directly. Of course, the judge said that knowing that this would require Clemens to bring Pettitte into the lawsuit, something Clemens can ill-afford. Pettitte, by truthfully coming forward, albeit after getting caught, retains his credibility and will have to again say under oath that Clemens was a drug user.
At some point Clemens may very well learn to leave well enough alone but for now it’s too late. His lawsuit may have been nothing more than an expensive exercise is public and private denial but it also served as a sharp stick in the eye to McNamee, who now plans on filing his own lawsuit. This one will be harder to dismiss.
Clemens doesn’t enjoy the immunity that McNamee had because Clemens’ statements about McNamee weren’t in the course of a governmental investigation. The only issue for the jury will be whether Clemens’ statements were defamatory. It’s a close call, given the extent of McNamee’s own wrongdoing.
But the real fireworks, just like the Jurevicius lawsuit, will be in the run up to the potential trial. Clemens will again be under oath and forced to either stick with his story thereby subjecting himself to perjury or moderate his stance into more of a Barry Bonds “I didn’t knowingly take any performance-enhancing drugs” non-denial denial.
Just don’t look for those fireworks anytime soon. Up until being replaced by South Carolina Mark Stanford, Clemens served as the textbook example of how not to handle a crisis. Eventually, though, he’ll learn his lesson and you’ll know it via the two or three line press release indicating that the parties have resolved their differences amicably.
Hopefully, then, we will have heard the last of Clemens.
**
Lost in all the mind-numbing sameness of this year’s version of the Cleveland Indians’ was general manager Mark Shapiro’s off-handed statement the other day that he hopes to right this ship in the next three years. Three years? Is there anyone alive out there?
It’s a testament to the job security that Shapiro must feel to be that blunt about his team’s prospects in the near term. The question is why isn’t anyone holding him more accountable? If Eric Mangini or George Kokinis had said that about the Browns there would have been a near riot on Mall C.
Maybe it was because Shapiro said it to a national writer that his three-year projection didn’t get much play locally. But it’s a stunning revelation nonetheless for a team that, more than many others, needs butts in the seats. Left unsaid, though, is exactly why Shapiro needs another three years or how, exactly, it will all come together in that amount of time.
My guess is that Shapiro is essentially admitting that serious organizational deficiencies in the acquisition of talent, both through free agency and in the draft, coupled with players on the current roster under long-term contracts that they can’t possibly live up to, are the culprits for his rather dismal prediction.
If the Indians were a publicly-traded company, the shareholders would revolt en masse. From a team that was relatively close to the World Series just a few years ago to have suddenly turned into baseball’s version of Delta Airlines smacks of management incompetence on a level not experienced since, well, the Browns returned to the NFL, but that’s another story.
But after learning some hard lessons after covering up Victor Martinez’s injury last season, Shapiro has embraced some level of transparency in his operations. Of course, that kind of transparency is always easier when nobody’s paying attention anyway. And if the fans’ indifference to the Indians’ latest free fall is teaching us anything, it’s that nobody really much cares anymore.
**
With Jhonny Peralta sleepwalking through another season, this week’s question to ponder: Is Peralta the least motivated player to wear a Cleveland uniform since Keith Hernandez?
Showing posts with label Roger Clemens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roger Clemens. Show all posts
Friday, July 03, 2009
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
A Closet Full of Skeletons
The calendar has barely turned the next page into the second quarter of 2008 and already my favorite story of the year has been published. I may ultimately change my mind come November or December, but right now it’s hard to imagine how anything can top the story in Monday’s New York Daily News that Roger Clemens may have had a 10-year affair with defrocked country singer Mindy McCready, unless it’s the story in Tuesday’s Daily News that McCready isn’t denying it. Now Clemens finally knows what it’s like to be on the business end of a fastball thrown at the head and somewhere a good portion of the baseball world is smirking.
When Clemens sold out his wife during his Congressional hearing by testifying that it was she, not he, taking the performance-enhancing drugs, it wasn’t necessarily hard to see something like this coming. But the smart money was on the dust settling first followed by a painful separation and the inevitability of Mrs. Clemens tearfully telling all to Dr. Phil or Barbara Walters, for a fee, that Roger had his share of Baseball Annies strewn about North America. In other words, Clemens having something akin to Magic Johnson’s love life wouldn’t have been much of a surprise. But an alleged affair that began when Clemens was in his late 20s and his target was still a few years from being legal was a scud. Even Woody Allen and Roman Polanski ducked for cover.
But really, should any of us be surprised? It may not be the Pythagorean Theorem but there is certainly a mathematical precision at work each time a high profile figure with a healthy dose of sanctimony eventually gets his comeuppance. In simple terms, the closer the ratio between the public figure and his public claims of pureness, the higher the likelihood that said public figure will fall by the same sword he wields. Indeed, increase the stature of the public figure and the more spectacular the fall becomes.
Plug in a congressman for example, multiply it by a public crusade against child abuse and exploitation and you get a disgraced Mark Foley resigning over sending sexually explicit messages to teenage boys serving as congressional pages. Plug in a U.S. Senator, multiply it by a public vote to ban same-sex marriages and it yields Larry Craig pleading guilty to disorderly conduct related to his wandering feet inside a stall in the men’s bathroom in the Minneapolis Airport.
In this context, Clemens is just the latest to get hoisted up on his own petard. But what makes this story so rich is how truly self-inflicted and well deserved this all is. Drinking from his own lethal cocktail of an overabundance of self-confidence, an incredible sense of entitlement, and an amount of hubris unknown to the average person, Clemens has been a walking text book in how woefully off-course one can easily veer when dispossessed of reality. So certain that he could spin a more believable yarn than a hanger-on like former trainer Brian McNamee, Clemens was completely blind as to how bad things might get for him when his story got challenged.
Immediately lawyering up and conducting an almost laughable public relations battle for his so-called reputation, Clemens tried to portray himself as the victim of a former friend motivated to lie to avoid prison. The problem is that no one really bought that premise. McNamee’s cooperation was reluctantly obtained in the first place and the only thing between him and prison is truthful testimony. The lies are too easy to discredit. But that’s not the only thing Clemens got wrong. He’s not nearly as beloved as he likes to think he is, a few fawning Congressional sycophants notwithstanding.
Clemens has never been known as a great teammate. He’s arrogant and standoffish, a me-first player in a team-first sport. He’s one of the original carpetbaggers always willing to sell his services to the highest bidder. In his last several years he didn’t even attempt to hide his contempt for his sport and his teammates by treating spring training as a ritual for those of lesser talent and stature than he.
But only the most hard core Clemens deniers think that his yearly retire/unretire ritual was motivated by a strong desire to spend more time with the family. Instead, it’s been openly whispered for years that this shell game was designed to allow Clemens to evade league drug testing in the off season (as if that should ever have been a concern anyway) and come back when he was finally clean.
The reason that these sorts of things were only openly whispered is because Clemens is Clemens. His on the field achievements are among the greatest in the game and cast a large shadow over whatever other baggage he carries. He never lacked for talent, only character, and now those flaws are finally coming home to roost.
It was touching how Clemens played the family card during his Congressional testimony even while missing the abject irony of also acknowledging that his former trainer was spending a little private time in the Clemens bedroom with Mrs. Clemens juicing her up for a Sports Illustrated photo shoot. It’s the same card he played as rationale for filing the suit the defamation suit against McNamee that ultimately is responsible for the revelations regarding his icky affair “family” relationship with a troubled B-list former country star. And as long as that suit continues, expect even more sordid revelations since Clemens’ supposedly stellar reputation is at the heart of the litigation. As they say in boxing, he’s lead with his chin and now it’s open season for anyone with an axe to grind, and there are plenty.
What Clemens doesn’t get is that it’s not defamation if it’s true. If Clemens thinks he was frustrated that more people didn’t buy his Congressional testimony, wait until he finally grasps that even less will buy his explanation of his relationship with McCready. As he’s sorting through this new mess, he should at least stop for the kind of personal reflection that has eluded him to this point.
If he does take that opportunity, then maybe he’ll begin to realize how far he’s sunk when he’s dealing with a public far more inclined to believe an admitted drug pusher—McNamee—and a convicted, drug-addled country singer than a seven-time Cy Young winner.
But personal reflection has never seemed to be much of a Clemens strength, which is why the only chance of a better story coming along this year than the current Clemens saga is if another Clemens skeleton comes dancing out of what’s turning out to be a huge, walk-in closet. And again, most of baseball is smirking.
When Clemens sold out his wife during his Congressional hearing by testifying that it was she, not he, taking the performance-enhancing drugs, it wasn’t necessarily hard to see something like this coming. But the smart money was on the dust settling first followed by a painful separation and the inevitability of Mrs. Clemens tearfully telling all to Dr. Phil or Barbara Walters, for a fee, that Roger had his share of Baseball Annies strewn about North America. In other words, Clemens having something akin to Magic Johnson’s love life wouldn’t have been much of a surprise. But an alleged affair that began when Clemens was in his late 20s and his target was still a few years from being legal was a scud. Even Woody Allen and Roman Polanski ducked for cover.
But really, should any of us be surprised? It may not be the Pythagorean Theorem but there is certainly a mathematical precision at work each time a high profile figure with a healthy dose of sanctimony eventually gets his comeuppance. In simple terms, the closer the ratio between the public figure and his public claims of pureness, the higher the likelihood that said public figure will fall by the same sword he wields. Indeed, increase the stature of the public figure and the more spectacular the fall becomes.
Plug in a congressman for example, multiply it by a public crusade against child abuse and exploitation and you get a disgraced Mark Foley resigning over sending sexually explicit messages to teenage boys serving as congressional pages. Plug in a U.S. Senator, multiply it by a public vote to ban same-sex marriages and it yields Larry Craig pleading guilty to disorderly conduct related to his wandering feet inside a stall in the men’s bathroom in the Minneapolis Airport.
In this context, Clemens is just the latest to get hoisted up on his own petard. But what makes this story so rich is how truly self-inflicted and well deserved this all is. Drinking from his own lethal cocktail of an overabundance of self-confidence, an incredible sense of entitlement, and an amount of hubris unknown to the average person, Clemens has been a walking text book in how woefully off-course one can easily veer when dispossessed of reality. So certain that he could spin a more believable yarn than a hanger-on like former trainer Brian McNamee, Clemens was completely blind as to how bad things might get for him when his story got challenged.
Immediately lawyering up and conducting an almost laughable public relations battle for his so-called reputation, Clemens tried to portray himself as the victim of a former friend motivated to lie to avoid prison. The problem is that no one really bought that premise. McNamee’s cooperation was reluctantly obtained in the first place and the only thing between him and prison is truthful testimony. The lies are too easy to discredit. But that’s not the only thing Clemens got wrong. He’s not nearly as beloved as he likes to think he is, a few fawning Congressional sycophants notwithstanding.
Clemens has never been known as a great teammate. He’s arrogant and standoffish, a me-first player in a team-first sport. He’s one of the original carpetbaggers always willing to sell his services to the highest bidder. In his last several years he didn’t even attempt to hide his contempt for his sport and his teammates by treating spring training as a ritual for those of lesser talent and stature than he.
But only the most hard core Clemens deniers think that his yearly retire/unretire ritual was motivated by a strong desire to spend more time with the family. Instead, it’s been openly whispered for years that this shell game was designed to allow Clemens to evade league drug testing in the off season (as if that should ever have been a concern anyway) and come back when he was finally clean.
The reason that these sorts of things were only openly whispered is because Clemens is Clemens. His on the field achievements are among the greatest in the game and cast a large shadow over whatever other baggage he carries. He never lacked for talent, only character, and now those flaws are finally coming home to roost.
It was touching how Clemens played the family card during his Congressional testimony even while missing the abject irony of also acknowledging that his former trainer was spending a little private time in the Clemens bedroom with Mrs. Clemens juicing her up for a Sports Illustrated photo shoot. It’s the same card he played as rationale for filing the suit the defamation suit against McNamee that ultimately is responsible for the revelations regarding his icky affair “family” relationship with a troubled B-list former country star. And as long as that suit continues, expect even more sordid revelations since Clemens’ supposedly stellar reputation is at the heart of the litigation. As they say in boxing, he’s lead with his chin and now it’s open season for anyone with an axe to grind, and there are plenty.
What Clemens doesn’t get is that it’s not defamation if it’s true. If Clemens thinks he was frustrated that more people didn’t buy his Congressional testimony, wait until he finally grasps that even less will buy his explanation of his relationship with McCready. As he’s sorting through this new mess, he should at least stop for the kind of personal reflection that has eluded him to this point.
If he does take that opportunity, then maybe he’ll begin to realize how far he’s sunk when he’s dealing with a public far more inclined to believe an admitted drug pusher—McNamee—and a convicted, drug-addled country singer than a seven-time Cy Young winner.
But personal reflection has never seemed to be much of a Clemens strength, which is why the only chance of a better story coming along this year than the current Clemens saga is if another Clemens skeleton comes dancing out of what’s turning out to be a huge, walk-in closet. And again, most of baseball is smirking.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Another Bad Seed
It’s always nice when the acorn doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
If anyone thought that when Yankees owner and former Clevelander George Steinbrenner voluntarily stepped aside from the daily grind in favor of his two sons, Hank and Hal, baseball’s flagship franchise might be ready to find a better way to balance its self interest with the overall good of the game, think again.
In the short time since he’s become the de facto face of Yankees, Hank Steinbrenner, is proving to be quite a successor to the rather large and boorish shoes of his more famous father.
When Alex Rodriguez initially refused to extend his contract and instead opted out, Hank blew the first of what’s turning out to be many gaskets. He vowed not to negotiate any further with Rodriguez or his agent Scott Boras. A few days later, he was doing just that, ultimately signing Rodriguez to a new, equally ridiculous contract.
When the Minnesota Twins were busy trying to play the Yankees off the Boston Red Sox for the services of Johan Santana, Steinbrenner threw down an ultimatum, threatening to pull his offer off the table. The Twins didn’t bite but the Yankees stayed in the talks. In fact, well after Steinbrenner’s rant, the Yankees kept right on negotiating, up until the point that the New York Mets swept in and stole Santana from the Twins.
Maybe these were just examples of the neglected son finally getting the keys to the car he was ill-trained to handle. Maybe, except that these episodes did signal that Steinbrenner won’t be much of an agent of change in stemming the tide of economic insanity that his father helped usher into this modern era of baseball. That hardly surprises. But where Hank could do some real good is on the issue of steroids. Unfortunately, that’s the real test he’s failing right out of the gate.
Exhibit A occurred when he claimed to be irked that baseball was supposedly being singled out while football in general and the NFL in particular were supposedly getting a free pass with respect to steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Unintentionally hilarious, Steinbrenner told the Associated Press last week “everybody that knows sports knows football is tailor-made for performance-enhancing drugs. I don't know how they managed to skate by. It irritates me. Don’t tell me it's not more prevalent. The number in football is at least twice as many. Look at the speed and size of those players.”
With nothing more than his own gut feeling to back this up, Steinbrenner completely failed to appreciate that as part of baseball’s ownership elite, he and his family are as culpable as anyone in this mess baseball finds itself in.
The last time anyone looked Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi and Chuck Knoblauch were all recipients of the Steinbrenner family’s largesse and all three high profile players are at the heart of the steroids scandal. And let’s not forget that it was the Steinbrenners, too, who employed Brian McNamee, an admitted steroids distributor. Steinbrenner also has been quick to embrace Pettitte’s illegal use, despite the growing body of evidence that Pettitte signed his latest contract with the Yankees, just days before the Mitchell Report was released, knowing but not disclosing to anyone that he would be named in it. If Steinbrenner is irritated, he needs look no further than the family album to figure out why.
But in case Steinbrenner isn’t into self-reflection, then he can at least look at the differences between football’s approach to steroids and that of his own sport. In that same story from the Associated Press, Greg Aiello, the NFL’s spokesman noted “we’ve had year-round random testing with immediate suspensions since 1990 and we conduct approximately 12,000 steroids tests a year.”
What Aiello didn’t say but didn’t have to was that the NFL and its union have mostly been out ahead of the steroids problem while baseball and its union had to literally be threatened by Congress with the loss of their antitrust exemption before embracing even a semi-meaningful testing program.
No one is foolish enough to think that simply having a testing program will completely eliminate the inherent stupidity of some players who think they are smart enough to beat the system time and time again. Indeed each and every NFL season brings its share of player suspensions. It’s just that the public perceives, and for good reason, that the NFL has had a relatively effective mechanism for dealing with its problem players.
Baseball, as everyone knows, has treated steroids with a wink and a smile. It didn’t start testing for steroids until about 10 years after the NFL. Moreover, it’s not as if baseball owners have ever taken a particularly strong stance against them, refusing to draw a line in the sand each time the players’ union refused to negotiate on the subject. By backing down instead of standing up, the owners let baseball’s steroids era flourish. It’s why, even to this day, the public still perceives that baseball’s system for dealing with illegal drugs is a joke.
The other thing Steinbrenner seems to be forgetting is that baseball, under the so-called leadership of Commissioner Bud Selig, purposely singled itself out by ordering the Mitchell Report in the first place. Having placed itself in that white-hot spotlight, it’s a little disingenuous for the likes of Steinbrenner to now complain.
But that won’t stop him of course. It’s a Steinbrenner trait. In comments to the New York Post last week, Steinbrenner said that Red Sox fans shouldn’t jeer Pettitte too loudly because “they [the Red Sox] had plenty of players doing this stuff, too. It’s just that those players weren’t mentioned in the Mitchell Report.” On the one hand, he’s probably right. Given the pervasive use of steroids in baseball, it’s rather doubtful that some members of the Red Sox didn’t have their own version of McNamee somewhere.
On the other hand, why would Steinbrenner think that Red Sox fans should act any differently than, say, Yankees fans? It’s not as if his hometown faithful are known for treating the opposition with respect and dignity. And it’s not as if the Yankees, along with their cross-town counterparts, the Mets, aren’t ground zero in this latest scandal. But in what is looking to be a Steinbrenner family trait, it’s better to attack than fix, deny rather than acknowledge.
At some point, hopefully before it’s too late, Selig and the rest of the thumb suckers that run baseball will speak in one credible voice on all the ills that infect their game. It’s the path to salvation for a sport in desperate need of some good news. But it looks like it won’t happen soon. Given the rather fast start Hank Steinbrenner has gotten himself off to, it looks like Selig and his cronies would have a better chance of nailing Jello to a tree.
If anyone thought that when Yankees owner and former Clevelander George Steinbrenner voluntarily stepped aside from the daily grind in favor of his two sons, Hank and Hal, baseball’s flagship franchise might be ready to find a better way to balance its self interest with the overall good of the game, think again.
In the short time since he’s become the de facto face of Yankees, Hank Steinbrenner, is proving to be quite a successor to the rather large and boorish shoes of his more famous father.
When Alex Rodriguez initially refused to extend his contract and instead opted out, Hank blew the first of what’s turning out to be many gaskets. He vowed not to negotiate any further with Rodriguez or his agent Scott Boras. A few days later, he was doing just that, ultimately signing Rodriguez to a new, equally ridiculous contract.
When the Minnesota Twins were busy trying to play the Yankees off the Boston Red Sox for the services of Johan Santana, Steinbrenner threw down an ultimatum, threatening to pull his offer off the table. The Twins didn’t bite but the Yankees stayed in the talks. In fact, well after Steinbrenner’s rant, the Yankees kept right on negotiating, up until the point that the New York Mets swept in and stole Santana from the Twins.
Maybe these were just examples of the neglected son finally getting the keys to the car he was ill-trained to handle. Maybe, except that these episodes did signal that Steinbrenner won’t be much of an agent of change in stemming the tide of economic insanity that his father helped usher into this modern era of baseball. That hardly surprises. But where Hank could do some real good is on the issue of steroids. Unfortunately, that’s the real test he’s failing right out of the gate.
Exhibit A occurred when he claimed to be irked that baseball was supposedly being singled out while football in general and the NFL in particular were supposedly getting a free pass with respect to steroids and performance enhancing drugs. Unintentionally hilarious, Steinbrenner told the Associated Press last week “everybody that knows sports knows football is tailor-made for performance-enhancing drugs. I don't know how they managed to skate by. It irritates me. Don’t tell me it's not more prevalent. The number in football is at least twice as many. Look at the speed and size of those players.”
With nothing more than his own gut feeling to back this up, Steinbrenner completely failed to appreciate that as part of baseball’s ownership elite, he and his family are as culpable as anyone in this mess baseball finds itself in.
The last time anyone looked Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi and Chuck Knoblauch were all recipients of the Steinbrenner family’s largesse and all three high profile players are at the heart of the steroids scandal. And let’s not forget that it was the Steinbrenners, too, who employed Brian McNamee, an admitted steroids distributor. Steinbrenner also has been quick to embrace Pettitte’s illegal use, despite the growing body of evidence that Pettitte signed his latest contract with the Yankees, just days before the Mitchell Report was released, knowing but not disclosing to anyone that he would be named in it. If Steinbrenner is irritated, he needs look no further than the family album to figure out why.
But in case Steinbrenner isn’t into self-reflection, then he can at least look at the differences between football’s approach to steroids and that of his own sport. In that same story from the Associated Press, Greg Aiello, the NFL’s spokesman noted “we’ve had year-round random testing with immediate suspensions since 1990 and we conduct approximately 12,000 steroids tests a year.”
What Aiello didn’t say but didn’t have to was that the NFL and its union have mostly been out ahead of the steroids problem while baseball and its union had to literally be threatened by Congress with the loss of their antitrust exemption before embracing even a semi-meaningful testing program.
No one is foolish enough to think that simply having a testing program will completely eliminate the inherent stupidity of some players who think they are smart enough to beat the system time and time again. Indeed each and every NFL season brings its share of player suspensions. It’s just that the public perceives, and for good reason, that the NFL has had a relatively effective mechanism for dealing with its problem players.
Baseball, as everyone knows, has treated steroids with a wink and a smile. It didn’t start testing for steroids until about 10 years after the NFL. Moreover, it’s not as if baseball owners have ever taken a particularly strong stance against them, refusing to draw a line in the sand each time the players’ union refused to negotiate on the subject. By backing down instead of standing up, the owners let baseball’s steroids era flourish. It’s why, even to this day, the public still perceives that baseball’s system for dealing with illegal drugs is a joke.
The other thing Steinbrenner seems to be forgetting is that baseball, under the so-called leadership of Commissioner Bud Selig, purposely singled itself out by ordering the Mitchell Report in the first place. Having placed itself in that white-hot spotlight, it’s a little disingenuous for the likes of Steinbrenner to now complain.
But that won’t stop him of course. It’s a Steinbrenner trait. In comments to the New York Post last week, Steinbrenner said that Red Sox fans shouldn’t jeer Pettitte too loudly because “they [the Red Sox] had plenty of players doing this stuff, too. It’s just that those players weren’t mentioned in the Mitchell Report.” On the one hand, he’s probably right. Given the pervasive use of steroids in baseball, it’s rather doubtful that some members of the Red Sox didn’t have their own version of McNamee somewhere.
On the other hand, why would Steinbrenner think that Red Sox fans should act any differently than, say, Yankees fans? It’s not as if his hometown faithful are known for treating the opposition with respect and dignity. And it’s not as if the Yankees, along with their cross-town counterparts, the Mets, aren’t ground zero in this latest scandal. But in what is looking to be a Steinbrenner family trait, it’s better to attack than fix, deny rather than acknowledge.
At some point, hopefully before it’s too late, Selig and the rest of the thumb suckers that run baseball will speak in one credible voice on all the ills that infect their game. It’s the path to salvation for a sport in desperate need of some good news. But it looks like it won’t happen soon. Given the rather fast start Hank Steinbrenner has gotten himself off to, it looks like Selig and his cronies would have a better chance of nailing Jello to a tree.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Hitting Rock Bottom
The theater of the absurd taking place in Congress on Wednesday in the form of the hearings over whether Roger Clemens did or did not use steroids and human growth hormone has, if nothing else, made the perfect coda for what has been one of the more interesting off-seasons in the history of major league baseball.
It started mostly with the issuance of the so-called Mitchell Report, the culmination of a lengthy investigation into baseball’s steroids era. Beyond confirming essentially rampant widespread steroids use across the baseball spectrum, it also shone a light on the seamy underside of the day to day workings of the average major league baseball locker room. Whatever you might think of former Clemens best friend forever Brian McNamee or New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski, the fact that these two had ready and open access to the players for years is pretty damning evidence in and of itself how tolerant baseball management was of the seedy way in which its business was actually conducted behind the scenes.
One of the more interesting revelations from McNamee’s testimony on Tuesday was a comment he related from David Cone in the late ‘90s. Cone was then pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays and was their player representative. According to McNamee, Cone told him that the owners weren’t all that interested in testing for steroids, just that they wanted to appear interested.
It’s hard to know, assuming Cone made the comments, whether or not he actually believed that to be the case. But with the huge benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it sure looks like Cone was correct. Baseball both before and under the weak leadership of its worst commissioner ever, Bud Selig, clearly buried their heads in the sand on the steroids issue and their way too late commissioning of the Mitchell Report does little to negate its culpability in that regard.
Selig and the owners can pat themselves on the back all they want about how far they’ve come, but the truth is that they still have far to go. There still are flaws in baseball’s drug testing program and the fact that the owners are not now nor have they ever been willing to draw a definitive line in the sand with the union to get an unassailable program, even to the point of taking a strike if necessary, is really all you need to know about baseball’s commitment to rid itself of drugs.
This isn’t to let the union off the hook whatsoever, either. Donald Fehr, under the specter of protecting individual privacy, has steadfastly refused to cooperate with the owners on achieving a flawless and comprehensive drug program. In truth, he was protecting the players’ rights to parlay their illegal drug use into bigger and bigger contracts. Fehr’s conduct at every phase, from repeatedly refusing to discuss the issue meaningfully at the bargaining table to instructing the players not to cooperate in Mitchell’s investigation, is all you really need to know about the union’s commitment to rid the game of drugs.
In the meantime, while the powers that be have played their wink-and-a-nod game with the integrity of their sport, the collateral damage continues to mount. The one person I felt truly sorry for on Wednesday was the Clemens family former nanny. To bolster a claim that he supposedly was not at a party hosted by Jose Canseco in 1998 when steroids were discussed, Clemens sought out the nanny to back him up. Though he hadn’t spoken to her at all since 2001, he spoke to her recently, apparently to test her recollection that indeed Clemens was not there. Committee chairman Henry Waxman raised the issue that Clemens conduct in this regard seemed a tad inappropriate. As Waxman said, the proper thing would have been to turn over her name to the committee and let them interview her first, implying, correctly, that Clemens may having been trying to coach the witness.
Though this whole party angle is mostly meaningless, it provides incredible insight to what ultimately is likely to sink Clemens—his hyper sense of bravado. Clemens submitted an affidavit that he was never at the party. He then testified similarly several times until finally hedging later. Of course, he had to hedge when it was discovered that Clemens’ family was at the party. Clemens then offered that perhaps he stopped by briefly to drop them off and then pick them up. Ok, so he was at the party.
And that’s been the pattern throughout this mess with Clemens. He speaks in haughty, definitive tones but then hedges later. He claimed, for example, that he “worked his butt off” (an unfortunate metaphor if ever there was one) and that this unparalleled work ethic is the reason for his success, not shortcuts. In another breath, he admits to shortcuts like a regimen of B12 injections and to popping the painkiller idocaine as if they were tic tacs. He told 60 Minutes that he was advised not to talk to Mitchell when Mitchell asked to interview him but testified that he was never told Mitchell wanted to speak with him. He claims he was raised in a strict drug-free family but didn’t seem particularly outraged at the fact that McNamee administered human growth hormone to Clemens’ wife. He appears to vouch for the credibility of his latest best friend forever Andy Pettitte but then says that Pettitte obviously is mistaken when he claims that Clemens told him that he was using human growth hormone. And on and on it went.
The posturing of the various congressmen during the hearing also was interesting with some on the side of Clemens, others on the side of McNamee. It was interesting mostly because it wasn’t a time for anyone to take sides in the first place. Assuming that a congressional hearing was necessary to resolve the he said/she said allegations of the two protagonists, a mighty big assumption, the only side anyone should have been on was the truth. But just as it does with most of what it does these day, Congress again lost sight of the objective.
While it is virtually impossible at this point to actually prove Clemens took steroids and human growth hormone, it is instructive nonetheless to point out that if the Mitchell Report and McNamee, by proxy, is wrong on this point, it’s the only thing it has been wrong about thus far. As Representative Elijah Cummings asked somewhat rhetorically at the hearing, why would McNamee be truthful about Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch, for example, both of whom confirmed McNamee’s allegations, and be untruthful about Clemens? Clemens, not surprisingly, didn’t have an answer, probably because there isn’t a good one.
The hearing was a bit of a battle royale between Clemens and McNamee but it’s unclear and probably unlikely that it will ever come to full resolution. Surely one of the two committed perjury and even if Clemens’ inconsistencies point the finger more toward him than McNamee, the chances that this ultimately becomes a criminal matter seem rather slim at this point. Where this issue will be decided, to the extent it hasn’t been already, is in the court of public opinion. And while some may have been persuaded one way or the other by today’s testimony, frankly both Clemens and McNamee came off as losers.
McNamee really has been nothing more than a glorified groupie to Clemens, Pettitte and the others who he “helped.” His usefulness in that regard now thoroughly compromised forever, he’s been discarded like so many other groupies who have come before him and is acting out not partly motivated by revenge. There’s nothing honorable in what he did then and certainly nothing particularly honorable in what he’s doing now. Remember, this is a guy whose initial default was to lie about his involvement in this whole drug mess in the first place. He only started squealing, like they all do, when the heat was closing in.
Clemens in many ways is just as dysfunctional. His dogged and unrelenting pursuit of pitching perfection blinded him to what was proper and what was right. If he didn’t know about McNamee’s little side business, then it was convenient and deliberate ignorance. If he tolerated his own wife’s use of human growth hormone, then he’s a hypocrite to boot. Clemens may have been more media friendly than Barry Bonds, but there is precious other little difference between the two. He is right in one regard, he’ll never get his reputation back nor does he deserve to.
As for major league baseball itself, it can’t act like this never happened simply by congratulating itself on the completion of the Mitchell Report. Baseball has an integrity problem that is no longer just a mile wide. It’s now clear it’s a mile deep as well. There is much it can do to rectify the situation, but acting as if this is all now in the past isn’t one of them. Baseball has now reached rock bottom. It’s time it admitted it and sought help.
It started mostly with the issuance of the so-called Mitchell Report, the culmination of a lengthy investigation into baseball’s steroids era. Beyond confirming essentially rampant widespread steroids use across the baseball spectrum, it also shone a light on the seamy underside of the day to day workings of the average major league baseball locker room. Whatever you might think of former Clemens best friend forever Brian McNamee or New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski, the fact that these two had ready and open access to the players for years is pretty damning evidence in and of itself how tolerant baseball management was of the seedy way in which its business was actually conducted behind the scenes.
One of the more interesting revelations from McNamee’s testimony on Tuesday was a comment he related from David Cone in the late ‘90s. Cone was then pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays and was their player representative. According to McNamee, Cone told him that the owners weren’t all that interested in testing for steroids, just that they wanted to appear interested.
It’s hard to know, assuming Cone made the comments, whether or not he actually believed that to be the case. But with the huge benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it sure looks like Cone was correct. Baseball both before and under the weak leadership of its worst commissioner ever, Bud Selig, clearly buried their heads in the sand on the steroids issue and their way too late commissioning of the Mitchell Report does little to negate its culpability in that regard.
Selig and the owners can pat themselves on the back all they want about how far they’ve come, but the truth is that they still have far to go. There still are flaws in baseball’s drug testing program and the fact that the owners are not now nor have they ever been willing to draw a definitive line in the sand with the union to get an unassailable program, even to the point of taking a strike if necessary, is really all you need to know about baseball’s commitment to rid itself of drugs.
This isn’t to let the union off the hook whatsoever, either. Donald Fehr, under the specter of protecting individual privacy, has steadfastly refused to cooperate with the owners on achieving a flawless and comprehensive drug program. In truth, he was protecting the players’ rights to parlay their illegal drug use into bigger and bigger contracts. Fehr’s conduct at every phase, from repeatedly refusing to discuss the issue meaningfully at the bargaining table to instructing the players not to cooperate in Mitchell’s investigation, is all you really need to know about the union’s commitment to rid the game of drugs.
In the meantime, while the powers that be have played their wink-and-a-nod game with the integrity of their sport, the collateral damage continues to mount. The one person I felt truly sorry for on Wednesday was the Clemens family former nanny. To bolster a claim that he supposedly was not at a party hosted by Jose Canseco in 1998 when steroids were discussed, Clemens sought out the nanny to back him up. Though he hadn’t spoken to her at all since 2001, he spoke to her recently, apparently to test her recollection that indeed Clemens was not there. Committee chairman Henry Waxman raised the issue that Clemens conduct in this regard seemed a tad inappropriate. As Waxman said, the proper thing would have been to turn over her name to the committee and let them interview her first, implying, correctly, that Clemens may having been trying to coach the witness.
Though this whole party angle is mostly meaningless, it provides incredible insight to what ultimately is likely to sink Clemens—his hyper sense of bravado. Clemens submitted an affidavit that he was never at the party. He then testified similarly several times until finally hedging later. Of course, he had to hedge when it was discovered that Clemens’ family was at the party. Clemens then offered that perhaps he stopped by briefly to drop them off and then pick them up. Ok, so he was at the party.
And that’s been the pattern throughout this mess with Clemens. He speaks in haughty, definitive tones but then hedges later. He claimed, for example, that he “worked his butt off” (an unfortunate metaphor if ever there was one) and that this unparalleled work ethic is the reason for his success, not shortcuts. In another breath, he admits to shortcuts like a regimen of B12 injections and to popping the painkiller idocaine as if they were tic tacs. He told 60 Minutes that he was advised not to talk to Mitchell when Mitchell asked to interview him but testified that he was never told Mitchell wanted to speak with him. He claims he was raised in a strict drug-free family but didn’t seem particularly outraged at the fact that McNamee administered human growth hormone to Clemens’ wife. He appears to vouch for the credibility of his latest best friend forever Andy Pettitte but then says that Pettitte obviously is mistaken when he claims that Clemens told him that he was using human growth hormone. And on and on it went.
The posturing of the various congressmen during the hearing also was interesting with some on the side of Clemens, others on the side of McNamee. It was interesting mostly because it wasn’t a time for anyone to take sides in the first place. Assuming that a congressional hearing was necessary to resolve the he said/she said allegations of the two protagonists, a mighty big assumption, the only side anyone should have been on was the truth. But just as it does with most of what it does these day, Congress again lost sight of the objective.
While it is virtually impossible at this point to actually prove Clemens took steroids and human growth hormone, it is instructive nonetheless to point out that if the Mitchell Report and McNamee, by proxy, is wrong on this point, it’s the only thing it has been wrong about thus far. As Representative Elijah Cummings asked somewhat rhetorically at the hearing, why would McNamee be truthful about Pettitte and Chuck Knoblauch, for example, both of whom confirmed McNamee’s allegations, and be untruthful about Clemens? Clemens, not surprisingly, didn’t have an answer, probably because there isn’t a good one.
The hearing was a bit of a battle royale between Clemens and McNamee but it’s unclear and probably unlikely that it will ever come to full resolution. Surely one of the two committed perjury and even if Clemens’ inconsistencies point the finger more toward him than McNamee, the chances that this ultimately becomes a criminal matter seem rather slim at this point. Where this issue will be decided, to the extent it hasn’t been already, is in the court of public opinion. And while some may have been persuaded one way or the other by today’s testimony, frankly both Clemens and McNamee came off as losers.
McNamee really has been nothing more than a glorified groupie to Clemens, Pettitte and the others who he “helped.” His usefulness in that regard now thoroughly compromised forever, he’s been discarded like so many other groupies who have come before him and is acting out not partly motivated by revenge. There’s nothing honorable in what he did then and certainly nothing particularly honorable in what he’s doing now. Remember, this is a guy whose initial default was to lie about his involvement in this whole drug mess in the first place. He only started squealing, like they all do, when the heat was closing in.
Clemens in many ways is just as dysfunctional. His dogged and unrelenting pursuit of pitching perfection blinded him to what was proper and what was right. If he didn’t know about McNamee’s little side business, then it was convenient and deliberate ignorance. If he tolerated his own wife’s use of human growth hormone, then he’s a hypocrite to boot. Clemens may have been more media friendly than Barry Bonds, but there is precious other little difference between the two. He is right in one regard, he’ll never get his reputation back nor does he deserve to.
As for major league baseball itself, it can’t act like this never happened simply by congratulating itself on the completion of the Mitchell Report. Baseball has an integrity problem that is no longer just a mile wide. It’s now clear it’s a mile deep as well. There is much it can do to rectify the situation, but acting as if this is all now in the past isn’t one of them. Baseball has now reached rock bottom. It’s time it admitted it and sought help.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Druggies
Blame it on the law of unintended consequences.
By naming names in the report he prepared for Major League Baseball on the use of performance enhancing drugs, former Senator George Mitchell unwittingly turned much attention away from the long-term, mostly ignored drug problems that still plague baseball to this day and toward figuring out exactly what was flowing through those needles that found themselves stuck to Roger Clemens’ butt.
And now, of course, a veritable cottage industry has arisen almost over night in terms of figuring out who’s telling the truth in the on-going soap opera between Clemens and his former best friend and personal trainer, Brian McNamee. Clemens doesn’t deny being a drug abuser, only that the abused drugs were steroids. He admits to downing Vioxx, a now discredited prescription pain reliever, as if they were Skittles and was regularly shot with Lidocaine, a prescription anesthetic. His trainer, under the threat of going to jail if he didn’t tell the truth, claims otherwise.
It’s an interesting debate that will probably decide the ultimate fate of Clemens’ legacy, but it is mostly a sideshow, which is a shame. The real issue is why baseball still won’t come to grips with the full scope of its drug problem.
On Tuesday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee held another hearing on steroids in baseball, a follow up of sorts to Mitchell’s report this past December. Commission Bud Selig, as expected, fell on his sword and adopted a mostly “the buck stops here” attitude, an approach that was convenient but meaningless given the simple fact that the drug culture flourished for years and years under his watch. Union president Donald Fehr, on the other hand, hedged a bit when trying to do the same but mostly came across as an ill-informed boob with little concern about the long-term health effects of the union members he claims to represent.
There was enough to titillate the average fan when a fair amount of the hearing was spent on Clemens, Miguel Tejada and the lengths to which San Francisco management went to protect its money tree, Barry Bond. But another focus of the hearings garnering a bit less attention was the flaws in baseball’s existing drug policies, despite Selig’s continued insistence that the programs are world class. Hardly.
Representative John Tierney of Massachusetts, for example, used the hearing as an opportunity to shed light on the issue of amphetamines. The back story is that amphetamine use was open and notorious in baseball (and probably most sports) for decades. In 2006 baseball finally outlawed their use and began testing for them. At the same time, however, it created a “therapeutic-use” exemption, meaning that any player who could con a doctor into writing a note could continue to use prescription amphetamines without penalty. The diagnosis of choice has been Attention Deficit Disorder and the drug of choice Ritalin.
In the first year of amphetamine testing, 28 players received the exemption, which basically mirrors the general population. But for reasons that neither Selig nor Fehr could explain, that figure ballooned to 107 the next year a figure that Tierney said was now eight times the general population. Selig did submit that they were trying to figure it out. The question, as always, is how hard.
In a story in Wednesday’s New York Times, Tierney expressed his frustration that Congress shouldn’t have to keep holding hearings in order to get baseball to address these problems. But if Tierney was frustrated coming out of the hearing, one wonders how he must have felt after reading the Times story in which Rob Manfred, baseball’s vice president in charge of labor relations, essentially downplayed the whole issue by saying that the Commissioner’s office, meaning Selig, really wasn’t all that concerned, even as Selig seemed to say otherwise. Added Manfred, “nobody knows why it jumped.”
Really? Nobody can figure that out? Maybe Manfred and Selig need to think outside the box and consider the crazy notion that it has something to do with addicted players finding a loophole in a poorly-crafted policy and driving a truck through it. Getting a doctor to write a note isn’t exactly the hardest thing to do. Ask the guy on the loading dock who bruised his finger at work and got the doctor to excuse him from work for two weeks. Better yet, ask Paul Byrd.
If that doesn’t illuminate it for Manfred and Selig, they should try talking with Dr. Gary I. Wadler, an anti-doping expert and internist, who points out in the Times story that Ritalin and the like help a person concentrate while also masking pain and increasing energy and reaction time. In other words, it jumped because players continue to crave a chemical edge and now have found a sanctioned way to make that happen. Duh.
But as reprehensible as baseball’s casual indifference is toward the four-fold increase in one year in players who suddenly have ADD, more galling is their continued insistence that their drug testing policies have been effective. The therapeutic exemption is just one flaw. The fact that baseball only conducts a total of 60 unannounced off-season drug tests among its more than 1300 players is another. As Rep. Diane Watson of California said at the hearing, based on pure statistical probabilities, it’s unlikely that the average player would ever be subjected to such a test.
Selig said the right thing, as he usually tries to do, that baseball is committed to a program that requires “adequate” unannounced testing, but he knows full well that any such agreement must be bargained with the union. Selig has never been able to adequately stand up to Fehr on virtually any issue and nothing Fehr said at the hearing suggests he will be any more agreeable now. The truth is that Selig and his fellow owners lack the will to place the integrity of their sport and the health of their players above their own economic interests. If it comes down to shutting down the sport in order to gain a meaningful, meaty drug testing policy, everyone, including Selig and Fehr, knows damn well which interest will prevail.
Another major flaw in the program, as highlighted by John Fahey, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency in a story in the USA Today, is baseball’s continued insistence that it run its testing program in-house. “Professional baseball's response to Sen. Mitchell's report is baffling,” Fahey said in a statement, according to the story in USA Today. “To suggest that it might continue to keep its anti-doping testing program in-house ... is demeaning to Sen. Mitchell and the congressional committees who view doping as a serious threat to public health.” As Fahey points out, an in-house program ultimately lacks accountability and helps foster the problems that are just now coming to light, such as the unexplained increase in therapeutic-use exemptions.
But Fahey reserved his biggest criticism for what he called baseball’s “blatant disregard for the truth” when it comes to testing for HGH, human growth hormone. Selig and Fehr continue to insist that there is no validated urine test for HGH, which is technically true. However, according to Fahey, there is a reliable blood test for HGH and, more importantly, the taking and storing of blood now for future testing is widely in use. The problem, of course, is that baseball’s testing policies do not allow for the drawing of blood let alone for punishment tomorrow for a positive test yesterday.
Left to their own accord from here on out, baseball likely would do nothing more than it’s done already and, if they could get away with it, would probably rescind half of what they have done. When it does move, it’s not because it’s for the good of the game but because a bayonet, in the form of the threatened repeal of their anti-trust exemption, is pointed at their eye sockets.
If you see a pattern in all of this, you’re not alone. Selig and Fehr like to talk a good game but their actions speak much more loudly. They want to appear to be tough on drugs but lack the philosophical conviction, not to mention the political will, to do what it would really take to ensure the public that their sport is both honest and clean. At the moment and for the foreseeable future, it’s neither.
By naming names in the report he prepared for Major League Baseball on the use of performance enhancing drugs, former Senator George Mitchell unwittingly turned much attention away from the long-term, mostly ignored drug problems that still plague baseball to this day and toward figuring out exactly what was flowing through those needles that found themselves stuck to Roger Clemens’ butt.
And now, of course, a veritable cottage industry has arisen almost over night in terms of figuring out who’s telling the truth in the on-going soap opera between Clemens and his former best friend and personal trainer, Brian McNamee. Clemens doesn’t deny being a drug abuser, only that the abused drugs were steroids. He admits to downing Vioxx, a now discredited prescription pain reliever, as if they were Skittles and was regularly shot with Lidocaine, a prescription anesthetic. His trainer, under the threat of going to jail if he didn’t tell the truth, claims otherwise.
It’s an interesting debate that will probably decide the ultimate fate of Clemens’ legacy, but it is mostly a sideshow, which is a shame. The real issue is why baseball still won’t come to grips with the full scope of its drug problem.
On Tuesday, the House Oversight and Reform Committee held another hearing on steroids in baseball, a follow up of sorts to Mitchell’s report this past December. Commission Bud Selig, as expected, fell on his sword and adopted a mostly “the buck stops here” attitude, an approach that was convenient but meaningless given the simple fact that the drug culture flourished for years and years under his watch. Union president Donald Fehr, on the other hand, hedged a bit when trying to do the same but mostly came across as an ill-informed boob with little concern about the long-term health effects of the union members he claims to represent.
There was enough to titillate the average fan when a fair amount of the hearing was spent on Clemens, Miguel Tejada and the lengths to which San Francisco management went to protect its money tree, Barry Bond. But another focus of the hearings garnering a bit less attention was the flaws in baseball’s existing drug policies, despite Selig’s continued insistence that the programs are world class. Hardly.
Representative John Tierney of Massachusetts, for example, used the hearing as an opportunity to shed light on the issue of amphetamines. The back story is that amphetamine use was open and notorious in baseball (and probably most sports) for decades. In 2006 baseball finally outlawed their use and began testing for them. At the same time, however, it created a “therapeutic-use” exemption, meaning that any player who could con a doctor into writing a note could continue to use prescription amphetamines without penalty. The diagnosis of choice has been Attention Deficit Disorder and the drug of choice Ritalin.
In the first year of amphetamine testing, 28 players received the exemption, which basically mirrors the general population. But for reasons that neither Selig nor Fehr could explain, that figure ballooned to 107 the next year a figure that Tierney said was now eight times the general population. Selig did submit that they were trying to figure it out. The question, as always, is how hard.
In a story in Wednesday’s New York Times, Tierney expressed his frustration that Congress shouldn’t have to keep holding hearings in order to get baseball to address these problems. But if Tierney was frustrated coming out of the hearing, one wonders how he must have felt after reading the Times story in which Rob Manfred, baseball’s vice president in charge of labor relations, essentially downplayed the whole issue by saying that the Commissioner’s office, meaning Selig, really wasn’t all that concerned, even as Selig seemed to say otherwise. Added Manfred, “nobody knows why it jumped.”
Really? Nobody can figure that out? Maybe Manfred and Selig need to think outside the box and consider the crazy notion that it has something to do with addicted players finding a loophole in a poorly-crafted policy and driving a truck through it. Getting a doctor to write a note isn’t exactly the hardest thing to do. Ask the guy on the loading dock who bruised his finger at work and got the doctor to excuse him from work for two weeks. Better yet, ask Paul Byrd.
If that doesn’t illuminate it for Manfred and Selig, they should try talking with Dr. Gary I. Wadler, an anti-doping expert and internist, who points out in the Times story that Ritalin and the like help a person concentrate while also masking pain and increasing energy and reaction time. In other words, it jumped because players continue to crave a chemical edge and now have found a sanctioned way to make that happen. Duh.
But as reprehensible as baseball’s casual indifference is toward the four-fold increase in one year in players who suddenly have ADD, more galling is their continued insistence that their drug testing policies have been effective. The therapeutic exemption is just one flaw. The fact that baseball only conducts a total of 60 unannounced off-season drug tests among its more than 1300 players is another. As Rep. Diane Watson of California said at the hearing, based on pure statistical probabilities, it’s unlikely that the average player would ever be subjected to such a test.
Selig said the right thing, as he usually tries to do, that baseball is committed to a program that requires “adequate” unannounced testing, but he knows full well that any such agreement must be bargained with the union. Selig has never been able to adequately stand up to Fehr on virtually any issue and nothing Fehr said at the hearing suggests he will be any more agreeable now. The truth is that Selig and his fellow owners lack the will to place the integrity of their sport and the health of their players above their own economic interests. If it comes down to shutting down the sport in order to gain a meaningful, meaty drug testing policy, everyone, including Selig and Fehr, knows damn well which interest will prevail.
Another major flaw in the program, as highlighted by John Fahey, the president of the World Anti-Doping Agency in a story in the USA Today, is baseball’s continued insistence that it run its testing program in-house. “Professional baseball's response to Sen. Mitchell's report is baffling,” Fahey said in a statement, according to the story in USA Today. “To suggest that it might continue to keep its anti-doping testing program in-house ... is demeaning to Sen. Mitchell and the congressional committees who view doping as a serious threat to public health.” As Fahey points out, an in-house program ultimately lacks accountability and helps foster the problems that are just now coming to light, such as the unexplained increase in therapeutic-use exemptions.
But Fahey reserved his biggest criticism for what he called baseball’s “blatant disregard for the truth” when it comes to testing for HGH, human growth hormone. Selig and Fehr continue to insist that there is no validated urine test for HGH, which is technically true. However, according to Fahey, there is a reliable blood test for HGH and, more importantly, the taking and storing of blood now for future testing is widely in use. The problem, of course, is that baseball’s testing policies do not allow for the drawing of blood let alone for punishment tomorrow for a positive test yesterday.
Left to their own accord from here on out, baseball likely would do nothing more than it’s done already and, if they could get away with it, would probably rescind half of what they have done. When it does move, it’s not because it’s for the good of the game but because a bayonet, in the form of the threatened repeal of their anti-trust exemption, is pointed at their eye sockets.
If you see a pattern in all of this, you’re not alone. Selig and Fehr like to talk a good game but their actions speak much more loudly. They want to appear to be tough on drugs but lack the philosophical conviction, not to mention the political will, to do what it would really take to ensure the public that their sport is both honest and clean. At the moment and for the foreseeable future, it’s neither.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Economic Suicide
If you want to know what’s wrong with baseball economics, look no further than yesterday’s announcement by the New York Yankees that they’ve signed pitcher Roger Clemens to a prorated $28 million contract for the rest of the season.
Yankee fans, of course, are celebrating this event mostly because their pitching has been decimated by early season injuries and they currently have the fourth-worst ERA in the American League. There is also the perception of Yankee fan that Clemens brings the kind of experience, at age 44, that will turn the struggling team into World Series champions, something they haven’t been since 2000.
Red Sox nation, on the other hand, isn’t exactly celebrating, mostly because in their view they came up short again in trying to lure Clemens back to Fenway Park and the team that cast him aside years ago as being in the twilight of his career. Mostly, though, Red Sox fan is against the move for the simple fact that whatever is good for the Yankees is bad for the Red Sox.
In this case, though, the feelings of the Red Sox and their fans have a much greater and general application. The signing isn’t just bad for the Red Sox, it’s bad for baseball. In underscoring why it’s bad for baseball, one need not even get into any of the many side issues surrounding Clemens. For example, it’s always been odd that with Clemens observers have merely whispered about his possible involvement with performance enhancing drugs while simultaneously screaming from the rooftops about Barry Bonds. Of course some have pointed out how Clemens continues to defy odds and put up unbelievable numbers at an age where his skills should otherwise be diminishing, much like Bonds. Those same folks have also pointed out the unbelievable physical changes Clemens body has undergone over the years, again not unlike Bonds. And, of course, those folks continue to point out that by more or less retiring each season and then unretiring when the season is well under way, Clemens seems to avoid any sort of drug testing during the off-season.
It’s also of no consequence to focus on what the Yankees don’t get for their millions, things like leadership, for example. Not only does Clemens get the late reporting date, he also gets the privilege of not having to even be with the team on days he’s not scheduled to pitch. The only thing the Yankees get is about 18 starts and nothing more.
Both of those scenarios don’t enhance the game either, but whatever Clemens’ alleged involvement with performance enhancing drugs may or may not be or whatever his princess treatment entails, they represent only the secondary reasons why his signing is bad for baseball. The first is that it drives home how completely broken baseball’s economics have become and how that breach threatens the game.
Clemens’ salary may be pro-rated to reflect the fact that he is just now returning, but had he been with the Yankees on day one, his $28 million salary would have been higher than the current payroll of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and not just by a little, but by a full $4 million, or the equivalent of what the Indians are currently paying their closer, Joe Borowski.
Ok, you say, “well, that’s Tampa Bay, what do you expect?” But Clemens’ salary is only $2.5 million less than the entire Florida Marlins payroll, or a bit less than the equivalent of what the Indians are collectively paying Rafael Betancourt, Fernando Cabrera, Fausto Carmona, Tom Mastny, Kelly Shoppach and Jeremy Sowers. In fact, for what the Yankees are paying Clemens, they could have almost half of the entire Indians roster, give or take a Josh Barfield.
One can play that game in all sorts of ways, but perhaps one barometer to really consider is the list of the highest paid players in baseball. Considering the Yankees now have a payroll in excess of $200 million, it won’t surprise anyone that the list of the Top 10 highest paid players is dominated by the Yankees. With his new salary, Clemens will top the list, but barely. Close behind is Jason Giambi at $23.4 million, Alex Rodriguez at $22.7 million and Derek Jeter at $21.6 million. Also in the Top 10 is Andy Pettite, another free agent acquisition of the Yankees in the offseason, who is currently 7th on the list with $16 million. In other words, 5 of the top 10 players in all of baseball reside in the Bronx.
Even more astounding is the fact that the collective salaries of just those five players are almost $112 million. If they were a team unto themselves, they’d have the fourth highest payroll in baseball, which is about 84% higher than the Indians current payroll.
You can cut these payroll statistics all day and every day and still find more and more insidious ways in which the disparity works against the best interests of baseball. That may be amusing to some but to most it is fair to ask: where is Commission Bud Selig in all of this? Why doesn’t he step in to put a stop to the insanity for the good of the game?
It wasn’t all that long ago that baseball actually had a commissioner in Bowie Kuhn who viewed his job in the historical context in which it was created and thus stepped into a similar situation before the wheels fell off. The year was 1976 and Oakland As owner Charlie Finley decided to gut his three-time world champs by selling Vida Blue to the Yankees and Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi to the Red Sox. Kuhn vetoed the deals because he believed that they weren’t in the best interests of the game. Finley threatened legal action but Kuhn didn’t relent. Eventually, Kuhn’s decision was upheld in court. Technically, Selig has the same power with respect to the Clemens deal. There is no chance he’d ever consider acting similarly, even though this is an arguably worse situation.
Of course, there are those who will argue that the Clemens signing is actually good for the game. But pressed for a cogent argument, the best that can be mustered is that every major league sport needs a flagship team, a foil, someone that fans in Boise, Idaho can get passionate about, either way. There is some merit to that and one need only consider the parity in pro football that breeds a good deal of disinterest in the casual fan.
It is also true that there is a certain amount of pleasure and satisfaction in knocking off the school yard bully, if only for a game or perhaps a series. It seems like sublime justice that with all the money spent, the Yankees haven’t won a world series since 2000 But beyond such fleeting feelings of superiority, the simple truth is that if that’s the best argument for the Clemens signing, the validity of the arguments against it are further underscored. Simply put, baseball cannot stand such financial disparity and survive healthy and intact.
Consider the impact this signing will have on the Indians and the pending free agency of C.C. Sabathia. The Indians awarded Sabathia with an above-market contract early in his career in order to retain his services for as long as possible while avoiding the scourge of a salary arbitration process that works only to further alienate a player from his current ballclub. But any goodwill the Indians engendered by such a move will become essentially irrelevant when it comes time to negotiate a new contract. When Indians general manager Mark Shapiro sits down with Sabathia’s representatives, the Clemens contract and all that flows from it will be the elephant in the room, even if they never address it directly.
It may be true that Clemens’ current salary isn’t likely to be the starting point in the negotiations with Sabathia, but it’s naïve to believe that it won’t have an impact. As we like to say, a high tide tends to raise all ships and as other pitchers creep up into Clemens’ salary range, the average price for a top of the rotation pitcher will quickly exceed the Indians reach, if it doesn’t already. Even taking out the Dolans factor in this equation, the bottom line issue revolves around the wisdom of devoting a disparate amount of the team’s payroll to one player.
When teams like the Yankees aren’t forced to live within any kind of budget, whether imposed in the form of a salary cap or through common sense business metrics, it makes it very difficult for every other team operating under a different paradigm. Most teams with deep pocket owners, such as the Texas Rangers, still find it difficult to operate successfully when too much of your payroll is devoted singularly. That’s why the Rangers ultimately dumped Alex Rodriguez on the Yankees, the only team that could really afford the contract. A Rod may have been making the Rangers a more marketable team temporarily, allowing them to sell a few more tickets and jerseys, but ultimately it’s wins that matter and with his salary chewing up so much payroll it was difficult for the Rangers to complete the puzzle. In fact, though Rodriguez is long gone from the Rangers, they are still struggling from the forced neglect to the rest of their team that his outsized contract ultimately required, although they are closer now to putting together a more complete team than at any time when they had Rodriguez.
In the end, if Indians fans don’t realize it yet they soon will. The Yankees signing of Clemens and the ripple effect it will have on pitcher salaries throughout the league makes it much less likely today that Sabathia will be an Indian after next season. If anything, it hastens his exit via a trade. And this is a scenario that will no doubt be repeated throughout most of baseball as teams struggle with their own versions of Sabathia. If Selig really thinks this is all good for the game then baseball has an even bigger problem.
Yankee fans, of course, are celebrating this event mostly because their pitching has been decimated by early season injuries and they currently have the fourth-worst ERA in the American League. There is also the perception of Yankee fan that Clemens brings the kind of experience, at age 44, that will turn the struggling team into World Series champions, something they haven’t been since 2000.
Red Sox nation, on the other hand, isn’t exactly celebrating, mostly because in their view they came up short again in trying to lure Clemens back to Fenway Park and the team that cast him aside years ago as being in the twilight of his career. Mostly, though, Red Sox fan is against the move for the simple fact that whatever is good for the Yankees is bad for the Red Sox.
In this case, though, the feelings of the Red Sox and their fans have a much greater and general application. The signing isn’t just bad for the Red Sox, it’s bad for baseball. In underscoring why it’s bad for baseball, one need not even get into any of the many side issues surrounding Clemens. For example, it’s always been odd that with Clemens observers have merely whispered about his possible involvement with performance enhancing drugs while simultaneously screaming from the rooftops about Barry Bonds. Of course some have pointed out how Clemens continues to defy odds and put up unbelievable numbers at an age where his skills should otherwise be diminishing, much like Bonds. Those same folks have also pointed out the unbelievable physical changes Clemens body has undergone over the years, again not unlike Bonds. And, of course, those folks continue to point out that by more or less retiring each season and then unretiring when the season is well under way, Clemens seems to avoid any sort of drug testing during the off-season.
It’s also of no consequence to focus on what the Yankees don’t get for their millions, things like leadership, for example. Not only does Clemens get the late reporting date, he also gets the privilege of not having to even be with the team on days he’s not scheduled to pitch. The only thing the Yankees get is about 18 starts and nothing more.
Both of those scenarios don’t enhance the game either, but whatever Clemens’ alleged involvement with performance enhancing drugs may or may not be or whatever his princess treatment entails, they represent only the secondary reasons why his signing is bad for baseball. The first is that it drives home how completely broken baseball’s economics have become and how that breach threatens the game.
Clemens’ salary may be pro-rated to reflect the fact that he is just now returning, but had he been with the Yankees on day one, his $28 million salary would have been higher than the current payroll of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and not just by a little, but by a full $4 million, or the equivalent of what the Indians are currently paying their closer, Joe Borowski.
Ok, you say, “well, that’s Tampa Bay, what do you expect?” But Clemens’ salary is only $2.5 million less than the entire Florida Marlins payroll, or a bit less than the equivalent of what the Indians are collectively paying Rafael Betancourt, Fernando Cabrera, Fausto Carmona, Tom Mastny, Kelly Shoppach and Jeremy Sowers. In fact, for what the Yankees are paying Clemens, they could have almost half of the entire Indians roster, give or take a Josh Barfield.
One can play that game in all sorts of ways, but perhaps one barometer to really consider is the list of the highest paid players in baseball. Considering the Yankees now have a payroll in excess of $200 million, it won’t surprise anyone that the list of the Top 10 highest paid players is dominated by the Yankees. With his new salary, Clemens will top the list, but barely. Close behind is Jason Giambi at $23.4 million, Alex Rodriguez at $22.7 million and Derek Jeter at $21.6 million. Also in the Top 10 is Andy Pettite, another free agent acquisition of the Yankees in the offseason, who is currently 7th on the list with $16 million. In other words, 5 of the top 10 players in all of baseball reside in the Bronx.
Even more astounding is the fact that the collective salaries of just those five players are almost $112 million. If they were a team unto themselves, they’d have the fourth highest payroll in baseball, which is about 84% higher than the Indians current payroll.
You can cut these payroll statistics all day and every day and still find more and more insidious ways in which the disparity works against the best interests of baseball. That may be amusing to some but to most it is fair to ask: where is Commission Bud Selig in all of this? Why doesn’t he step in to put a stop to the insanity for the good of the game?
It wasn’t all that long ago that baseball actually had a commissioner in Bowie Kuhn who viewed his job in the historical context in which it was created and thus stepped into a similar situation before the wheels fell off. The year was 1976 and Oakland As owner Charlie Finley decided to gut his three-time world champs by selling Vida Blue to the Yankees and Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi to the Red Sox. Kuhn vetoed the deals because he believed that they weren’t in the best interests of the game. Finley threatened legal action but Kuhn didn’t relent. Eventually, Kuhn’s decision was upheld in court. Technically, Selig has the same power with respect to the Clemens deal. There is no chance he’d ever consider acting similarly, even though this is an arguably worse situation.
Of course, there are those who will argue that the Clemens signing is actually good for the game. But pressed for a cogent argument, the best that can be mustered is that every major league sport needs a flagship team, a foil, someone that fans in Boise, Idaho can get passionate about, either way. There is some merit to that and one need only consider the parity in pro football that breeds a good deal of disinterest in the casual fan.
It is also true that there is a certain amount of pleasure and satisfaction in knocking off the school yard bully, if only for a game or perhaps a series. It seems like sublime justice that with all the money spent, the Yankees haven’t won a world series since 2000 But beyond such fleeting feelings of superiority, the simple truth is that if that’s the best argument for the Clemens signing, the validity of the arguments against it are further underscored. Simply put, baseball cannot stand such financial disparity and survive healthy and intact.
Consider the impact this signing will have on the Indians and the pending free agency of C.C. Sabathia. The Indians awarded Sabathia with an above-market contract early in his career in order to retain his services for as long as possible while avoiding the scourge of a salary arbitration process that works only to further alienate a player from his current ballclub. But any goodwill the Indians engendered by such a move will become essentially irrelevant when it comes time to negotiate a new contract. When Indians general manager Mark Shapiro sits down with Sabathia’s representatives, the Clemens contract and all that flows from it will be the elephant in the room, even if they never address it directly.
It may be true that Clemens’ current salary isn’t likely to be the starting point in the negotiations with Sabathia, but it’s naïve to believe that it won’t have an impact. As we like to say, a high tide tends to raise all ships and as other pitchers creep up into Clemens’ salary range, the average price for a top of the rotation pitcher will quickly exceed the Indians reach, if it doesn’t already. Even taking out the Dolans factor in this equation, the bottom line issue revolves around the wisdom of devoting a disparate amount of the team’s payroll to one player.
When teams like the Yankees aren’t forced to live within any kind of budget, whether imposed in the form of a salary cap or through common sense business metrics, it makes it very difficult for every other team operating under a different paradigm. Most teams with deep pocket owners, such as the Texas Rangers, still find it difficult to operate successfully when too much of your payroll is devoted singularly. That’s why the Rangers ultimately dumped Alex Rodriguez on the Yankees, the only team that could really afford the contract. A Rod may have been making the Rangers a more marketable team temporarily, allowing them to sell a few more tickets and jerseys, but ultimately it’s wins that matter and with his salary chewing up so much payroll it was difficult for the Rangers to complete the puzzle. In fact, though Rodriguez is long gone from the Rangers, they are still struggling from the forced neglect to the rest of their team that his outsized contract ultimately required, although they are closer now to putting together a more complete team than at any time when they had Rodriguez.
In the end, if Indians fans don’t realize it yet they soon will. The Yankees signing of Clemens and the ripple effect it will have on pitcher salaries throughout the league makes it much less likely today that Sabathia will be an Indian after next season. If anything, it hastens his exit via a trade. And this is a scenario that will no doubt be repeated throughout most of baseball as teams struggle with their own versions of Sabathia. If Selig really thinks this is all good for the game then baseball has an even bigger problem.
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