He was suspended, today,
He officially appealed Wednesday (through the Players' Union).
It's official: Bud Selig has something to hide.
One source had it that Selig decided not to try for the life ban on A-Rod because Selig felt it would actually sway public sympathy toward Rodriguez.
The understanding that Selig has to have to believe that is either that he's clueless, he has no balls, or he is openly stating what I have personally feared for a long time: 20 years and more into the influx of performance-enhancing drugs to the sport, that these drugs had a profound impact on the retention of a number of Major League Baseball teams and that sterpids (at least in Selig's probable opinion and definitely in mine) saved the league in present form after the 1994 strike.
Bud Selig is a sham.
Bud Selig is a criminal charlatan.
Bud Selig, and most of the hierarchy of baseball (both on the owners' side and on the players'), should be put in prison under the RICO Act.
As I said earlier, I believe that Selig himself, as an owner and as an attempt to do the sole thing he was installed as Commissioner when the owners' ran off Fay Vincent in September of 1992, was simply making money.
At this point, CBS was leading the television ratings into the crapper, to the point they ate a half-billion dollars on the national baseball rights.
Vincent was, among other things, trying to put in a new drug policy that would've nipped the Steroid Era in the bud, something Selig and his cohorts among the 18 owners who voted Vincent out of the Commissioner's Office could not have, especially two years later, as it was clear the 1994 strike and cancellation of the 1994 World Series damaged baseball to an extent to which it will never recover.
It was then that baseball ceased as the National Pastime -- if not before, it certainly did then.
But the facts are simple: The administration of baseball, on both sides, was very pro-drug until Congress decided to threaten the one thing that would be a deal-breaker to Major League Baseball: Finally take away the anti-trust exemption.
Now, the players' union stance is that drug cheats are on their own -- which is one of the largest reasons most of the Biogenesis suspensions are not being appealed.
(Until Wednesday, when they got behind A-Rod's appeal! Hypocrisy, anyone??)
And Selig, ever the charlatan, wants the BBWAA to actually think that he was against the use of PEDs during his Commissionership (never mind he never would've been Commissioner had he actually been against the use of illegal drugs -- as Vincent was trying to implement a policy against them in the Best Interests of Baseball, one of many things Allan knows NOTHING about).
That's right, people: The only damn reason this criminal pig wants to "crack down" is because he wants to be in Cooperstown.
Screw that.
He has ZERO INTENTION, and that's not even the worst of it, to curtail drug use in Major League Baseball.
He is competing with a league that only a fool and an idiot (which would probably mean most of it's fans/fealty-swearers would this) would think that many/most of the football players in the Neanderthug Felon League would be clean.
The fact is, and I think he knows this: He has done so many things to destroy the integrity, history, and tradition of baseball. He now has a balkanized sport in which fans are fans of teams and not the sport.
(Which see Goodell's NFL for a perfect counterexample.)
He does not want "real fans" of baseball. He does not want the historians and the grand traditions of the game to mean a damn thing anymore.
He is a money man.
Bud Selig is a whore. Plain and simple: Bud Selig is a whore, and he's willing to pimp out a drugged Major League Baseball to get it done.
He needs to go.
He needs to go to jail.
And this is a telling moment for the new head of the Players' Association.
Why? My baseball-historian friend, ready to, once again for steroids, give up on baseball, came up with a great idea: A work stoppage. If the majority of players are clean and they are sick of the steroids, there's going to have to be a disruption.
That said, I do not believe the premise of the MLBPA head that the majority of players are clean and that they are sick of the steroids -- if this were the case, the head of the MLBPA might well be out of that post tout suite. But if it is true, a strike might be the only way to shake out the remaining dirty players, because it will force all parties to take sides.
There is one huge problem which will almost-certainly prevent such a strike, however. If the clean players lose, steroids will return to the game with an absolute vengeance.
We cannot have that.
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