Double Play or Double Jeopardy

Being at work all day, I have not been able to follow the baseball hearings in Congress until I got home around 4 PM EST. I have had to go to this page and get the rundown along with watching clips on other cable channels.

From what I saw so far live and in replay, former Major League pitcher and current U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) said the penalties under Major League Baseball’s current drug policy are “puny.” and proposed a ‘three strikes’ rule similar to what the NBA has for substance abuse violators. Bunting said the best statement of the day when he stated:

Mr. Chairman, maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I remembered that players didn’t get any better as they got older,” Bunning said. “We all got worse. When I played with Henry Aaron and Willie Mays and Ted Williams, they didn’t put on 40 pounds and bulk up in their careers, and they didn’t hit more home runs in their late 30s than they did in their late 20s. What is happening in baseball now isn’t natural and it isn’t right.

When we thought that was a brilliant statement. Bunning topped himself with this statement minutes later:

“If they started in 1992 or 1993 illegally using steroids, wipe all of their records out,” Bunning said. “Take them away. They don’t deserve them. Go ask Henry Aaron. Go ask the family of Roger Maris. Go ask all of the people that played without enhanced drugs if they would like their records compared with the current records.”

Well said Senator!!!!!

Canseco looks very nervous and even made a statement stating that some things would not be answered because he did not get immunity and that it may possibly incriminate him. However, even though Canseco is probably the ’shadiest’ character of the people testifying, Canseco has summed everything up requesting the government to address the issue because baseball as a sport refuses to. Sosa has not added much, Palmiero looks like he is ready for a fistfight with Canseco, and the most disappointing person of them all is not Canseco. It’s McGwire.

It appears that McGwire (from the replays I saw) appears very tense and in fear of future repercussions to his career outside of baseball. McGwire continues to stick to the “I’m not here to talk about the past…” mentality but kudos go out to Rep. Mark Souder when he said this statement

“If the Enron people come in here and say, ‘Well we don’t want to talk about the past,’ do you think congress is going to let them get away with that? … If we don’t talk about the past, how in the world are we supposed to pass legislation when you are a protected monopoly and all your salaries are paid because you are a protected monopoly? How are we supposed to figure out what our obligations are to the taxpayers if you say we won’t talk about the past?”

Very valid point. If McGwire’s logic was universal truth, then we would never have a court trial because a court trial is about determining the truth and justice about a past event. McGwire has alot to lose here. He is up for election into the Baseball Hall of Fame shortly and if he ever admitted to using steroids or someone else was to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that ‘Big Mac’ used steroids, Pete Rose would probably have a better chance of getting into the Hall of Fame than McGwire because Rose finally admitted to betting on baseball when it now appears that McGwire will not admit to or deny he took steriods.

McGwire is credited (along with Sosa) for ’saving baseball’ in 1998 years after the strike that cancelled the World Series severly diminished the popularity of the sport. It was the race to 62 home runs and the setting of a new record that brought people like me who gave up on baseball back to the television screen to watch baseball again. Let’s face it, we loved McGwire and Sosa because they appeared to be two ‘everyday’ baseball players who did not have big egos to match their big pocketbooks. We loved the daily press conferences and the countdown to 62. We loved the fact that McGwire hit his record breaking homerun in St. Louis against Sammy and the Cubs. We loved the dialog of Father Mark and son Matt and how Cooperstown immortialized the father-son hug. We love the hug McGwire and Sosa shared on the field after the celebration was completed by the team. We loved how Sosa also broke the 62 barrier. We loved how McGwire embraced the Maris family and how at the end of the HBO movie 61, Roger Maris’ widow is on her deathbed in a hospital and saw McGwire hit the homerun on television with the voices of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver in the background and a smile appears on her face.

This was the feelgood story of 1998. Now I do not feel too good about it. This not too good feeling is added to the fact that years later, an arrogant Barry Bonds broke McGwire’s record and hit 73 home runs.

Today, McGwire fears losing his place in Cooperstown, fears losing the admiration of his fans, fears losing future revenue if he decides to go the sports memorabilia route, fears losing the fact that he did at that time an impossible feat. Big Mac may eventually lose these things and more. However, he lost something today. He lost respect and admiration for simply answering one question.

It’s very easy to see why baseball never addressed the problem of steriods. Baseball needed to survive the combination of overpaid athletes and the over rich (but lacking in sense) owners that felt it was worth to pay the athletes. There was only one way to survive. Deny and not deal, and pass the buck to the fans via stadium concession revenues.

The NBA is a perfect example of a good working sports business model. The NBA has a salary cap, has a tough substance abuse policy, knows how to market it’s athletes, and has a working history of addressing their issues like the “BasketBrawl” incident earlier this season very fairly and very quickly. Major League Baseball can learn alot from the NBA.