Selig Will Not Be Blamed for Steroids

I haven't exactly been shy about my feelings towards MLB commissioner Bud Selig here at FanHouse, but just in case this is your first visit and you don't have time to check the tag, here's a quick summary. I believe that Bud Selig is an incompetent buffoon that has never cared anything for fans and only about the bottom line of owners all across the league. I also believe that for every good idea he's had (like the wild card) he's had 50 bad ideas (the All-Star game deciding home-field advantage).

I also happen to believe that Bud is largely responsible for the steroids boom that took place during his regime. I believe he ignored it because the home run chase of 1998 with Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa helped bring fans back to the ballpark following the black eye that was the 1994 strike. Bud wants you to know, however, that it's not his fault. Why, he had no idea.

In a lengthy telephone interview Monday, the commissioner of baseball strongly disputed the widely held perception that he was in any way complicit in the proliferation of steroids in major-league baseball during the past 15 years.

"I don't want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn't care about it,'' Selig said. "That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I'm sensitive to the criticism. The reason I'm so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we've come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.''

"I'm not sure I would have done anything differently. A lot of people say we should have done this or that, and I understand that. They ask me, 'How could you not know?' and I guess in the retrospect of history, that's not an unfair question. But we learned and we've done something about it. When I look back at where we were in '98 and where we are today, I'm proud of the progress we've made.''

While I can agree with Selig that baseball has made progress in battling steroid use in the sport, and the game could continue to improve its stance against steroids, I refuse to believe that Selig had no idea what was going on. I was only 17 years old at the time of McGwire and Sosa's chase of Babe Ruth, and I was well aware of the fact that these guys had to be on steroids. My reason for this being I had seen them play in previous years.

Were they home run hitters then? Yes, but they weren't built like freaking comic book super heroes. So Selig can say he didn't know what was going on all he wants, it only makes him look even dumber than he already does, which is quite the remarkable feat when you think about it.