Selig Threatens Punishment for A-Rod

After the release of the Mitchell Report in late 2007, Bud Selig held a press conference that found him acting awfully pleased with himself. Years of embarrassing revelations and dirty players running amok were behind baseball, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were out of the game and there were finally some teeth in the testing program. Selig obviously felt like he'd earned the chance to crow a bit.

And then along came Alex Rodriguez to ruin all of Selig's fun and bring steroids back to the headlines just before another season gets underway. Clearly this makes Selig angry, angry enough to threaten A-Rod with punitive measures.

"It was against the law, so I would have to think about that," Selig said. "It's very hard. I've got to think about all of that stuff."

Bad idea, Bud. For the first time ever, the union and MLB worked together to implement the 2003 testing program so that they could figure out that an actual steroid testing program was necessary. Those results were supposed to be anonymous and confidential, they turned out to be neither, and they were supposed to carry no penalty for a positive test. Three strikes and any hopes of the union working with baseball again in the future will be out.

That would be bad for the game going forward, but Selig's priority is hardly the game. It is his ever worsening legacy as the man who presided over an era of great economic gain and moral loss that is on his mind. That's why he also said he's considering reinstating Hank Aaron as the home run king. He thinks that would make him a great hero to people upset at Bonds and A-Rod, and that the fact that they ever existed would just be a blip in the game's history.

Go ahead, make Aaron the king of homers. Keep living in the past and trying to come up with recriminations for a time before you cared to take the problem seriously, instead of focusing on making sure the game is clean today. That's why Selig should be shown the door. You can't expect that the guy who helped grow the problem would be interested in finding the solution.

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