dirty
EOG Master
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD noWrap>March 31, 2006
By Ray Ratto
CBS SportsLine.com Columnist
Tell Ray your opinion!
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</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- T9349158 --><!-- Sesame Modified: 03/31/2006 12:41:17 --><!-- sversion: 6 $Updated: lylec$ -->Finally, Barry Bonds gets some good news, and wouldn't you know that the deliverer of that news turns out to be Bud Selig.
The good news, of course, is the steroid investigation, or as we are going to come to know it, Bud Jumping The Shark.
You know about jumping the shark, right? It was the episode in the lame hit TV series Happy Days when Fonz, the allegedly cool guy, ends up jumping over a shark on water skis while in full leather/chino regalia. It was the moment when the show went completely off the rails and destroyed itself, to the great relief of viewers and sharks everywhere.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=210 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD width=210>
</TD><TD width=15> </TD></TR><TR><TD width=210>Be afraid, Bud. Be very afraid. (AP) </TD><TD width=15> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Well, this is Bud's moment. An investigation called by him, chaired by former senator George Mitchell, a seemingly forthright chap who is also a director of the Boston Red Sox, is supposed to determine the scope of performance enhancement use since the institution of drug testing in baseball in 2003.
The decision has been, well, laughed at across the board. Too little too late, or face-saving, or hinder-covering. The reaction has been almost universal derision.
But it also served to anger the players themselves, who see through this transparent nonsense as clearly as anyone, and who understand it for what it is -- a chance to deflect the story from the book Game of Shadows. The book has Bonds front and center in the baseball sections of a book about the BALCO lab and its founder, Victor (I Bought This Mustache Off Adam Morrison) Conte.
As we know -- or can easily surmise if we navigated our way out of third grade -- the baseball hierarchy, both labor and management, is in this story up to its eyelids, going back nearly 20 years now. They knew the pharmaceutical carnival had come to baseball, and chose through mutual self-interest and connivance to let it set up shop halfway between second base and the pitchers mound.
In other words, guilt is everywhere, and now the time has come to pay the tab.
Only the investigation isn't going to head for the boardrooms as well as the clubhouses. It's aimed at Bonds, Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi, since those are the only active players hooked into the BALCO story. And that's only if the investigation can get them by learning anything outside the scope of the book -- which of course, it won't, because the players, the most likely carriers of information on the subject, are not in a mood to cooperate with such a transparently laughable project.
The fact is, this isn't Selig's baby any more. It belongs to the authors, like the Game of Shadows gents, and Howard Bryant and Juicing The Game, and several other books on the subject that carry the hard, unvarnished facts. And their targets are not restricted to Barry Bonds. The owners, the union, the players, the media ... they're all involved here, in varying stages of culpability.
The owners, because they knew what was up and cashed in anyway. The union, because it didn't want to rock the wasp hive. The players, because the risks the users ran affected them all.
And finally the media, because it still fixates only on Bonds and the home run record, instead of recognizing this first and foremost as a health and safety fiasco. Yeah, this is about Bonds because he's the biggest name, and because his accomplices were the ones who left the paperwork lying around.
But it's really about the industry, the complicit and the silent together. Not because of competitive balance, but because of unregulated, uncontrolled dangerous drug use administered by the unqualified. We amuse ourselves with the home run issues and the image issues and the booing issues and the legacy issues, but in doing so, we end up staring into our Manhattans and miss the iceberg entirely.
[/FONT]</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Indeed, it is amazing that only one steroid factory servicing only a few players has been found, and that only because the feds got involved. The media might need to answer for that as well, because it's a damned surety that baseball isn't going to make an effort to find any.
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</NOSCRIPT></TD><TD width=10> </TD></TR><TR><TD colSpan=2 height=10><SPACER type="block" width="1" height="10"></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></P>Yes, it's everyone, in varying shades of guilt, malfeasance or just lack of motivation. If Mitchell's investigation says that, if it lathers the guilt on all parties, two coats plus primer, nobody will quarrel with the findings. Also, nobody will care, because we know all this already. The books, and our common sense, have told us so.
But it won't. It can't. This is the baseball way -? to do something half-hearted once it is clear that a problem won't go away. And this is Bud's latest attempt to look like he's in charge of a process the people who run and play the game long ago let run wild.
He isn't in charge, and he's out of ideas, other than this -- an investigation designed to find either scapegoats or nothing, whichever is more likely to keep Congress off their backs. Nobody believes in it, nor should they. The fact-finding is out of baseball's hands now, because it isn't about to target itself for its failures.
Investigations don't work that way. If they did, John Dowd wouldn't have been asked to investigate Pete Rose, Marge Schott would have.
So now Barry Bonds can sit back and see that he isn't the only one in the barrel any more. Bud Selig has come inadvertently to his rescue, jumping the shark to protect what can no longer be saved.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
By Ray Ratto
CBS SportsLine.com Columnist
Tell Ray your opinion!
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</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-- T9349158 --><!-- Sesame Modified: 03/31/2006 12:41:17 --><!-- sversion: 6 $Updated: lylec$ -->Finally, Barry Bonds gets some good news, and wouldn't you know that the deliverer of that news turns out to be Bud Selig.
The good news, of course, is the steroid investigation, or as we are going to come to know it, Bud Jumping The Shark.
You know about jumping the shark, right? It was the episode in the lame hit TV series Happy Days when Fonz, the allegedly cool guy, ends up jumping over a shark on water skis while in full leather/chino regalia. It was the moment when the show went completely off the rails and destroyed itself, to the great relief of viewers and sharks everywhere.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=210 align=left><TBODY><TR><TD width=210>
</TD><TD width=15> </TD></TR><TR><TD width=210>Be afraid, Bud. Be very afraid. (AP) </TD><TD width=15> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Well, this is Bud's moment. An investigation called by him, chaired by former senator George Mitchell, a seemingly forthright chap who is also a director of the Boston Red Sox, is supposed to determine the scope of performance enhancement use since the institution of drug testing in baseball in 2003. The decision has been, well, laughed at across the board. Too little too late, or face-saving, or hinder-covering. The reaction has been almost universal derision.
But it also served to anger the players themselves, who see through this transparent nonsense as clearly as anyone, and who understand it for what it is -- a chance to deflect the story from the book Game of Shadows. The book has Bonds front and center in the baseball sections of a book about the BALCO lab and its founder, Victor (I Bought This Mustache Off Adam Morrison) Conte.
As we know -- or can easily surmise if we navigated our way out of third grade -- the baseball hierarchy, both labor and management, is in this story up to its eyelids, going back nearly 20 years now. They knew the pharmaceutical carnival had come to baseball, and chose through mutual self-interest and connivance to let it set up shop halfway between second base and the pitchers mound.
In other words, guilt is everywhere, and now the time has come to pay the tab.
Only the investigation isn't going to head for the boardrooms as well as the clubhouses. It's aimed at Bonds, Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi, since those are the only active players hooked into the BALCO story. And that's only if the investigation can get them by learning anything outside the scope of the book -- which of course, it won't, because the players, the most likely carriers of information on the subject, are not in a mood to cooperate with such a transparently laughable project.
The fact is, this isn't Selig's baby any more. It belongs to the authors, like the Game of Shadows gents, and Howard Bryant and Juicing The Game, and several other books on the subject that carry the hard, unvarnished facts. And their targets are not restricted to Barry Bonds. The owners, the union, the players, the media ... they're all involved here, in varying stages of culpability.
The owners, because they knew what was up and cashed in anyway. The union, because it didn't want to rock the wasp hive. The players, because the risks the users ran affected them all.
And finally the media, because it still fixates only on Bonds and the home run record, instead of recognizing this first and foremost as a health and safety fiasco. Yeah, this is about Bonds because he's the biggest name, and because his accomplices were the ones who left the paperwork lying around.
But it's really about the industry, the complicit and the silent together. Not because of competitive balance, but because of unregulated, uncontrolled dangerous drug use administered by the unqualified. We amuse ourselves with the home run issues and the image issues and the booing issues and the legacy issues, but in doing so, we end up staring into our Manhattans and miss the iceberg entirely.
[/FONT]</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Indeed, it is amazing that only one steroid factory servicing only a few players has been found, and that only because the feds got involved. The media might need to answer for that as well, because it's a damned surety that baseball isn't going to make an effort to find any.
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</NOEMBED><NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT><SCRIPT language=JavaScript src="http://amch.questionmarket.com/adscgen/st.php?survey_num=229243&site=12773823&code=15408105&randnum=2966460"></SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT>But it won't. It can't. This is the baseball way -? to do something half-hearted once it is clear that a problem won't go away. And this is Bud's latest attempt to look like he's in charge of a process the people who run and play the game long ago let run wild.
He isn't in charge, and he's out of ideas, other than this -- an investigation designed to find either scapegoats or nothing, whichever is more likely to keep Congress off their backs. Nobody believes in it, nor should they. The fact-finding is out of baseball's hands now, because it isn't about to target itself for its failures.
Investigations don't work that way. If they did, John Dowd wouldn't have been asked to investigate Pete Rose, Marge Schott would have.
So now Barry Bonds can sit back and see that he isn't the only one in the barrel any more. Bud Selig has come inadvertently to his rescue, jumping the shark to protect what can no longer be saved.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
