Baseball Commissioner Rip Van Selig Awakes

In a move designed to mystify and confound the sporting public, Major League Baseball's Commissioner announced today:

"Nothing is more important to me than the integrity of the game of baseball,"

After a decade of rumors, more than one grand jury investigation, magazines articles and at least two books on the subject, the somnolent leader of free world baseball acknowledged that maybe the use of steroids was of concern to to the game.  The former owner of the hapless Milwaukee Brewers indicated that after 280 million Americans had some knowledge of the use of performance enhancing medications, something needed to be done.

Let's be fair to the Commissioner.  He wasn't asleep.  He spent the last nine years reviewing Pete Rose's banishment from Major Leage Baseball, and consequently the Hall of Fame.

Game of Shadows : Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports

Juiced : Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big

Totally Juiced, Sports Illustrated, June 3, 2003

Comments

[Charles Webb]

I being a very big baseball fan am getting tired of Bud Selig and his double standard of how he babies umpires and crucifies players.
He came out a few seasons ago and said that all umpires were to hold to the original strike zone and now we have the strikezone changing everytime the homeplate umpire changes. Players are being ejected and fined at a record rate because umpires are not being held accountable for their mistakes. Major League Baseball wants to keep their exemption from Anti-Trust laws and at the same time refuse to allow the players and managers their 1st amendment rights to free speech.
Where does Major League baseball get off being allowed to restrict what players and managers say on the field in their defense of an umpires's bad call or lousy strike zone when National Football League coaches and players can yell all they like at the referees and side judges and umpire. It is time to do away with the behind the plate umpire. With our technology today it would be easier and more fair to install cameras around homeplate to cover every angle and to establish a light screen that could be adjusted for each batter to make sure that strikes are called strikes and balls balls. An umpire could be seated up in a booth to look over controversial plays and call down to the field much like the Colleges and the NFL do. Bud Selig needs to go and a more forward thinking and fairer judge of the game put in his place.