Selig to be in attendance when Bonds passes Aaron

Not sure if this is a d_b but this just moved on SI.com

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/jon_heyman/07/10/daily.scoop/index.html

 

Re: Selig to be attendance when Bonds passes Aaron

Ridiculous. A slap to the face of Henry Louis Aaron.

 

No...if anything Bonds breaking the record is a slap in the face of Aaron. This is an historic moment, no matter what the circumstances. Selig belongs there. Not attending is the equivalent of sticking his head in the sand and hoping it all goes away.

Either find a way to stop it (push for an asterisk or a suspension of some sort) or be there. That's exactly what the commish should do.

 

Who sounds like a bitter old man these days. Without that smoking gun he's been looking for the past five years or so, this is really the only right decision Selig could make here.

 

Commish should be there, no question about.

 

You'd be a bitter old man too if a record you worked your whole career to establish was about to be usurped by a drug-dependent cheater.

Selig should say nothing about it, pro or con. Simply don't show up when he breaks the record. That's statement enough.

 

SI is the only one reporting this and an MLB spokesman says no such decision has been made.

 

Except, as has been pointed out, Selig presided over this whole era, arguably should have known what was going on, and is the commissioner of baseball. (The fact that overwhelming suspicion is still not proof should be secondary.) And, as much as the steroid hysterics would have you believe otherwise, most people who will be watching haven't made the finely tuned moral calculation it will take to turn off the set.

 

Bonds has done nothing wrong except for being rather arrogant. He plays hard, plays in pain and, as far as I know, hasn't demanded to be the general manager

 

To try to ignore the record means opening up the idea of tossing out statistics of at least some players from the steroid era. This would turn into a gigantic clusterfuck and Selig knows it. He wants no part of that mess.

 

Barry Bonds is one of the great players in the history of the game, to disrespect his on field performance is to disrespect the game.