We know about Giambi; what about Bud?
Mark Kriegel
FOXSports.com, Updated 13 hours ago
After agreeing to meet with Senator George Mitchell and not rat out his colleagues, Jason Giambi released a statement:
"The commissioner impressed upon me the idea that the game of baseball would be best served by such a meeting. I will continue to do what I think is right and be candid about my past history regarding steroids. I have never blamed anyone nor intended to deflect blame for my conduct."
This is wonderful news, for only in Major League Baseball could a recovering steroid abuser qualify as a standup guy.
But here's the real question: could Commissioner Bud Selig make the same statement? Everybody who cares to know has a pretty good idea of Giambi's history with performance-enhancing drugs. Four years ago, he testified before a federal grand jury, supplying a narrative that appears in Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams' blockbuster, Game of Shadows. Much less is known about Selig's past history regarding steroids. For the good of the game, the sport whose honor Selig is bound to protect, it's time to know.
Giambi's recent ordeal began last month when he was quoted in USA Today, saying, basically, that he was sorry for doing steroids, that both players and owners bore responsibility, and that they should have apologized long ago. Unfortunately, he added, no one wanted to deal with the issue, much less acknowledge it.
I found these sentiments praiseworthy and unassailable, but Selig, whose tenure as commissioner coincides rather neatly with baseball's steroid era, thought otherwise. He wanted Giambi to testify before Mitchell — who owns a piece of the Boston Red Sox — or be punished, meaning anything from suspension to abrogation of his contract. Understand that the commissioner has not threatened any other player this way. Giambi was finding out the hard way that baseball can't handle the truth it claims to be seeking.
As it happens, the USA Today piece was written by Bob Nightengale. Twelve years ago, while covering baseball for the Los Angeles Times and The Sporting News, Nightengale wrote that steroids were "becoming an epidemic in baseball."
He wasn't the only baseball writer who raised the issue. But he was among the few. He quoted general managers and players, pitchers and hitters. He also quoted the acting commissioner.
"If baseball has a problem," Selig told Nightengale in 1995, "I must say candidly that we were not aware of it. It certainly hasn't been talked about much. But should we concern ourselves as an industry? I don't know, maybe it's time to bring it up again."
Again? Selig was referring to an owners meeting in 1994. It went nowhere then. It went nowhere the following year, and remained nowhere until the new milennium. In 1998, even as Mark McGwire began hitting home runs and selling tickets at a pace previously thought impossible, it became a taboo subject.
Of speculation regarding McGwire's testosterone-boosting supplements and what the commissioner called "a storybook year," Selig said: "None of this should ever diminish from Mark McGwire's extraordinary season."
Baseball kept denying the obvious. On July 28, 2000, Selig's executive vice president for baseball operations, Sandy Alderson, was quoted as saying that some steroid use had been found in the minors, but not the big leagues. "(It) hasn't really been a problem and it's not clear that it's a problem today," Alderson said. "I think there's a total absence of that."
Total absence? For years that was the party line. Now Selig likes to say that baseball has the toughest steroid testing policy of any major sport. It's 2007, though, and baseball fans have a right to know more than that.
Where was he all those years?
If Giambi has to explain himself, then the commissioner should, too.
He'll get the chance, if he hasn't already. In a statement, Senator George Mitchell said, "While it has been my policy not to comment on the details of (the) investigation, I can say that the investigation will include interviews of Commissioner Selig as well as former Commissioners of baseball."
You wonder, though, will Selig be as honest as Giambi?
Will he, for the first time in this entire steroids saga, be a standup guy?
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