MLB Strikes Out, as Usual

Buster Olney's article How shortsighted greed is tearing baseball apart provides a great summary of some of the reasons that MLB is falling apart. It is worth emphasizing that he sees a direct connection between the flawed tanking mentality that has also harmed the NBA and the current mindset that is damaging MLB:

It's the Luhnow mindset as applied to labor relations.

Under Luhnow, the Houston Astros were the sport's supreme practitioners of tanking, becoming the first team since the 1962-65 Mets to lose at least 106 games in three consecutive seasons. In Luhnow's first three seasons as Houston GM, the Astros spent a total of $137.4 million in payroll--$53 million less than the next-lowest team, the Pirates ($190.7 million). The Astros drew a 0.0 in local television ratings for consecutive seasons. They manipulated the service time of some of their best young players, as did other teams. Luhnow's team engaged in ultra, next-level sign-stealing, and traded for Roberto Osuna fresh off his 75-game suspension under the sport's domestic violence policy.

But so long as the math made sense, Luhnow pushed the envelope and the Astros won a World Series in 2017. Of course, in the big picture, Luhnow's management turned out to be a disaster for many reasons besides wins and losses. Under his watch, the Astros helped to drag the sport under a low bar of credibility as other teams tried to replicate his formula, with fans left to wonder if what they paid to see was farcical.

Throughout those years, which included Luhnow giving the OK for a club employee to monitor the opposing dugout from an adjacent camera well, you kept waiting for someone to step up and lead. You kept waiting for someone to acknowledge the astounding accumulation of damage to good-faith competition and operation, just as you keep on waiting for someone on the owners' side to end this embarrassing negotiation with the players' association, rather than engaging in this battle of reconstituted Spam offers.

The house of baseball is burning and somebody needs to put out the fire immediately, by making a deal that moves the sport forward beyond this absurd fight over increments.

The opportunity to own the sporting stage in early July is gone. The potential goodwill (and ratings) all but certain for the first big sport out of the gate may be all but squandered.

Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts talking about a cash-flow problem when tens of millions of people have lost their jobs? Not good. Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt, who has seen the value of his franchise multiply by at least a factor of 10, talking about how you can't make money in baseball? Not good.

If COVID-19 had not prevented the 2020 MLB season from starting on time, the focus would have been on MLB's weak, incompetent, and impotent response to widespread cheating. Now, the focus on that fiasco may have faded a bit, but only because MLB seems determined to commit suicide.

MLB has been a disaster for over 25 years; the best thing that the sport did in that time period, paradoxically, is to have a strike that ended Michael Jordan's baseball career; this hastened his NBA comeback, during which he won three more NBA titles, culminating in the "Last Dance" season. The strike was terrible for baseball, but I would gladly give up the World Series in exchange for watching Michael Jordan play in the NBA again.

Bud Selig was a horrible Commissioner who presided over the destruction of MLB's once-cherished record book; it is a travesty and an embarrassment that he is in the Baseball Hall of Fame at all, let alone that he was welcomed while Pete Rose remains banned. Rob Manfred, Selig's successor, may turn out to be even more horrible than Selig was--as bad as Selig was, MLB did not die on his watch; if Manfred and crew do not get their act together, MLB may lose the entire 2020 season, and suffer permanent damage.

UEFA's Strong Response to Cheating Emphasizes MLB's Incompetence

The public recently learned The Disgraceful Secret of the Astros' and Red Sox' Success: Cheating, and we also saw Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Rob Manfred set the price that an MLB owner must be willing to pay for cheating to win a World Series title: $5 million. Manfred made it clear that if a team cheats to win the World Series then that team keeps the title and "the piece of metal" (as he dismissively referred to the trophy awarded to his sport's champion). How many MLB owners would pay $5 million to win a World Series title?

Fortunately, not every sport responds so casually to cheating. In Foul Balls and Red Cards: How Baseball and Soccer’s Different Approaches to Cheating Illustrate the Power of Organizational Response, authors Reid Whitten and J. Scott Maberry (both from the law firm SheppardMullin) contrast the punishment that MLB prescribed for the Houston Astros with how UEFA (the governing body of European soccer) dealt with cheating committed by Manchester City, one of the English Premier League's top teams (footnotes omitted):

In both cases, the team's cheating threatened the integrity of the whole sport. In both cases, the integrity of the sport is critical to the business model of the respective leagues. If fans begin to think one side has been allowed an unfair advantage, they will quickly lose faith in the competitive nature of the sport. Fans would then, slowly but surely, lose interest in spending money to support their teams.

For those reasons, in both cases, the governing leagues needed to respond quickly and decisively to reassure fans that the games are fair and to restore the integrity of their respective organizations. Where soccer succeeded in doing so, baseball has failed.

The highest prize in European soccer is the UEFA Champions League trophy. The Champions League is a season-long competition where the best club teams from countries from Ireland to Russia, from Poland to Portugal play in an international tournament of the champions of the various national systems (Manchester City, for example, is one of the most dominant teams in the English Premier League). It is an honor just to make the Champions League tournament and, when a team wins that tournament, it stakes its claim as the best team in Europe.

Among other violations, the UEFA's investigation of Manchester City found that the team's owner, a billionaire from the United Arab Emirates, funneled his own money to companies who had signed sponsorship agreements with the team, which enabled the team owner to evade limits on spending his own money on the team. The punishment, announced in February, is a two-year ban from playing in the Champions League. No trophies, no mid-week competitions on the world's biggest stage for soccer clubs, no ticket sales, television rights, or website clicks for updates. Done. Two years. You cheated, you're out of the Big Dance...

We predict that the UEFA's approach will help lead to a healing of Manchester City's wounds to European soccer, whereas MLB's response has merely magnified the Astros' threat to baseball.

In MLB's missed opportunity is a lesson for all organizations: sometimes it feels too harsh to punish wrongdoers inside an organization. But when the organization's very integrity is threatened by the cheating, the cheaters have to be dealt with.

When the walls of your house have rotten boards, you need to find the rot and cut it away, not paint it over. Cutting out the rot is difficult and sometimes painful. But it may be just the thing that keeps your house standing.

MLB has been a bad joke for more than a quarter century, dating back at least to the 1994 strike that wiped out the sport's crown jewel event, the World Series. We have also witnessed fake home run records (and, in some cases, inflated pitching statistics) created by PED cheaters, and the 2002 MLB All-Star Game ending in a tie as clueless Commissioner Bud Selig shrugged his shoulders impotently on national TV. MLB's simultaneous embrace of Alex Rodriguez--who should have received a lifetime ban--and ostracism of Pete Rose (even as MLB makes millions of dollars now by partnering with legalized betting operations) is bizarre, though not quite as bizarre as the fact that Selg is in the Baseball Hall of Fame but Rose is not.

The Disgraceful Secret of the Astros' and Red Sox' Success: Cheating

The Houston Astros have been widely portrayed as a model franchise in terms of utilizing analytics to build a successful team: the Astros tanked to accumulate draft picks, and then they used analytics to decide which players to draft, which veteran players to acquire, and how to maximize the talents of those players during games.

All of that sounds great in theory--but the reality is that the secret edge that pushed the Astros over the top and enabled them to win the 2017 World Series was old fashioned cheating: the Astros stole the opposing team's signs during games and then made noise in their dugout to alert their hitters about which pitch to expect.

If Bud Selig were still the Major League Baseball Commissioner, the Astros would have probably received a slap on the wrist while Selig broke his arm patting himself on the back, which was baseball's version of crime and punisment as Selig presided over the "Steroids Era." Fortunately, Rob Manfred at least has some sense of how serious this offense is: Commissioner Manfred assessed a $5 million fine against the Astros, stripped the franchise of its first and second round picks in both 2020 and 2021, and suspended General Manager Jeff Luhnow and Manager A.J. Hinch for the 2020 season (the Astros subsequently fired both men, neither of whom will be permitted to work for any other MLB team next season). Many baseball insiders have publicly expressed surprise at these supposedly draconian punishments but Manfred--although he showed more sense than Selig, an admittedly low hurdle to clear--did not go far enough. The Astros still go down in history as the 2017 World Series champions, and not one player who participated in the cheating has received any punishment.

It is becoming increasingly hard to understand why Pete Rose is burdened with a lifetime ban, while cheating players such as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Alex Rodriguez are embraced by Major League Baseball, and cheating teams like Houston and Boston (see below) retain their coveted (but forever tarnished) World Series crowns.

MLB has a lot to learn from other sports. In track and field, cheaters like Ben Johnson, Marion Jones and others are stripped of their Olympic and World Championship medals. In cycling, Lance Armstrong's seven Tour de France titles were voided.

If MLB and its leadership had any courage or any sense, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez and every other "Steroids Era" cheater would be removed from the record book and banned from Hall of Fame consideration--and the Astros would be stripped of the 2017 World Series title, with every player who was involved in the cheating being disciplined by MLB. Manfred's excuses for not punishing the players--too many players were involved, many of the players play for other teams now, and he did not feel like he could determine the relative guilt of each player--are weak, and provide an open invitation to players to cheat in the future, with the knowledge that if they are caught then they will keep their World Series rings while their manager and GM take the fall.

The investigation into the Astros' wrongdoing revealed that Alex Cora--who played a major role in Houston's cheating as a bench coach--similarly participated in cheating perpetrated by the Boston Red Sox as he served as that team's manager during their 2018 World Series championship season. Cora should be banned for life, and the Red Sox should be stripped of their title--but it is possible that Cora will get off with no more than a one year suspension, and it is likely that the Red Sox will pay a price that does not include losing their championship.

Of course, Boston is another franchise that has been lauded for profitably utilizing analytics.

Analytics have proven their value in many fields, from science to retail to law; law is my profession, and as a Customer Success Manager for Lex Machina--the pioneer and leader in the legal analytics field--I am well aware of the tremendous value provided by analytics that are accurate, complete and relevant. However, this MLB cheating scandal renews the question of just how valuable or reliable baseball analytics are; if the analytics provide a decisive edge, then why would two teams that are deeply immersed in analytics risk getting caught stealing signs?

I have often written about the strengths and limitations of "advanced basketball statistics" and the application of real basketball analytics, but the widely held assumption for quite some time is that analytics work better in baseball than in basketball because baseball is a station to station game of discrete actions, not a free-flowing game of interconnected simultaneous actions.

The Houston and Boston cheating scandals do not "prove" that baseball analytics have no value, but these scandals do legitimately raise the question of how much of an advantage Houston and Boston gained through analytics compared to how much of an advantage they gained by breaking the rules.

Why do I criticize the Astros and Red Sox after previously expressing the opinion that the so-called "Spygate" and "Deflategate" situations involving the New England Patriots were overblown by the media? Simple. The Astros and Red Sox unambiguously and deliberately cheated, and their cheating led directly to the championships that they won. In contrast, the Patriots committed a technical rules violation in "Spygate" that may not have even conferred a significant competitive advantage, and it is not even clear that they did anything wrong in "Deflategate." While baseball pitch signals are concealed, the signals that the Patriots filmed during "Spygate" can be viewed by anyone watching an NFL game on TV; the systematic gathering and collection of those signals for later analysis is not permitted (and that is why the Patriots were punished by the NFL), but this is not the same as intercepting a catcher's signals in real time and banging a trash can in the dugout to let the batter know in real time the exact pitch that is coming. Further, the Astros and Red Sox attempted to conceal what they were doing, while the Patriots' videographers were wearing team colors, and their presence could not have been more obvious if they had been waving semaphore flags. Regarding "Deflategate," independent scientists examined the evidence and concluded that the methodology and conclusions of the infamous Wells Report were flawed.

NFL cheating incidents that should outrage fans include (1) the 2010 Saints putting "bounties" on opposing players en route to winning the Super Bowl, (2) the Denver Broncos circumventing salary cap rules to stack enough talent around John Elway to enable him to win two Super Bowls in the 1990s, (3) the San Francisco 49ers circumventing salary cap rules during the 1990s, and (4) the massive steroid use that fueled the Pittsburgh Steelers' 1970s championship teams (and may be responsible for the sad, early demises suffered by many of the players from those teams).

Of course, the media picks and chooses who to target and who to absolve in these situations. New England Coach Bill Belichick rarely provides useful soundbites to the media, so it is OK for the media to dub him "Belicheat." The Saints were a fairy tale story in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, so their intentional maiming of opposing NFL players is readily forgotten; Gregg Williams, the ringleader of the Saints' bounty scheme, is back in the NFL and is a respected coach, even though some players say that he is still coaching his players to intentionally injure opposing players. Elway's Broncos, and the 1990s 49ers are also popular, so their transgressions are forgotten. The Steelers are part of the NFL's ancient and storied history, so no one cares to examine their widespread steroid abuse.

It will be interesting to see how the media choose to depict the Astros and the Red Sox. For me as a baseball fan, Major League Baseball has not been the same since the strike canceled the 1994 World Series, and then the "Steroids Era" combined with Bud Selig's bumbling (remember the 2002 All-Star Game that ended in a tie while Selig shrugged?) permanently stained the sport and its once-hallowed record book--though, as a basketball fan, I thank MLB for having a strike that lasted so long that it helped push Michael Jordan back to the NBA. This latest scandal just confirms to me that the baseball record book before 1994 was nonfiction, while the baseball record book post-1994 is fiction, replete with fraudulent home runs, fraudulent MVPs and, now, fraudulent champions. This is not to say that other pro sports are pure or flawless, but the past 25 years or so have been brutal for MLB.

Alex Rodriguez Should Have Received a Lifetime Ban a Long Time Ago

Major League Baseball has suspended Alex Rodriguez for over 200 games--the remainder of the 2013 regular season, the 2013 postseason, the entire 2014 regular season and the 2014 postseason--not only for using performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) but for actively obstructing MLB's investigation of his illegal conduct. Here is part of MLB's official statement regarding Rodriguez:

Rodriguez's discipline under the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program is based on his use and possession of numerous forms of prohibited performance-enhancing substances, including Testosterone and human Growth Hormone, over the course of multiple years. Rodriguez's discipline under the Basic Agreement is for attempting to cover-up his violations of the Program by engaging in a course of conduct intended to obstruct and frustrate the Office of the Commissioner's investigation. The suspension, which will become effective on Thursday, August 8th, will cover 211 Championship Season games and any 2013 Postseason games in which Rodriguez otherwise would have been eligible to play.

MLB Commissioner Bud Selig broke his arm patting himself on the back: "Despite the challenges this situation has created during a great season on the field, we pursued this matter because it was not only the right thing to do, but the only thing to do." Feel free to print out that statement, shred the paper and spread it over your yard, because it will serve as excellent fertilizer; those words would have sounded great if they had been backed up by action more than a decade ago but this is a case of partially closing the barn door after the PED-using foxes stole hundreds of millions of dollars and rewrote the MLB record book. Rodriguez should have been banned for life at least four years ago, after he admitted that he used steroids from 2001-03. Rodriguez posted the three highest single season home run totals of his career during those seasons--52, 57, 47--after not hitting more than 42 home runs in any of his five previous full seasons. He subsequently hit 48 home runs in 2005 and 54 home runs in 2007. Rodriguez won the AL MVP award in 2003, 2005 and 2007. All of those accomplishments are permanently tainted by his repeated use of illegal PEDs. Even if he had "only" used PEDs from 2001-03, Rodriguez' post-2003 numbers and awards would still be fraudulent because there is good reason to believe that PED usage confers advantages that last long after such usage is discontinued. He and all other PED users should be banned for life not just to provide the strongest possible deterrent to potential future PED users but also because anyone who has used PEDs has a long term advantage over clean players.

Instead, not only did MLB decline to suspend Rodriguez for life but his suspension will not start immediately, nor will he likely serve the full 211 game duration; he intends to appeal the punishment and he will be permitted to play until a ruling is made about that appeal. If Rodriguez hits 13 more home runs to tie Willie Mays' career total of 660 then Rodriguez will receive a $6 million bonus on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars that he already has been paid under false/illegal pretenses. Selig and MLB are doing the "right thing" only if you believe that criminals who defiled the sport's record book should be permitted to keep their ill gotten financial gains and their fraudulently obtained awards. Selig and MLB ignored the PED scourge until a Congressional investigation prompted them to take belated, tentative steps to clean up the game. Rodriguez is near the end of his career; he has already safely banked his money and placed his MVP trophies on his mantle. The sport's Hall of Fame voters will be dealing with the aftermath of Selig's Steroid Era for several decades. Selig trumpeting his own virtues for doing "the right thing" should surpass the old definition of chutzpah--the child who kills both of his parents and then asks the court for mercy because he is an orphan. MLB only knew about the Biogenesis PED users because a disgruntled Biogenesis employee released documentation to a small Miami newspaper; Selig is acting like he is Sherlock Holmes on the PED case but his investigative and policing acumen much more resembles that of Rosco P. Coltrane or Barney Fife.

As part of the same MLB investigation of Biogenesis that belatedly caught Rodriguez, 2011 NL MVP Ryan Braun--who had repeatedly and aggressively denied being a PED user--accepted a 65 game suspension. Braun's suspension began immediately because he reached an agreement with MLB and thus will not file an appeal. Rodriguez and Braun are just the tip of MLB's most recent PED iceberg; most of the media attention will be focused on them because they are big names but today MLB also issued 50 game suspensions to the following players: Nelson Cruz, Jhonny Peralta, Jesus Montero, Everth Cabrera, Francisco Cervelli, Antonio Bastardo, Jordany Valdespin, Fernando Martinez, Jordan Norberto, Fautino de los Santos, Cesar Puello and Sergio Escalona. The latter five players are minor leaguers but Cruz and Peralta are each two-time All-Stars and Cabrera joined them on the 2013 All-Star team. Cruz was on pace to set career-highs in home runs and RBI this season. MLB statistics and records have about as much meaning and credibility as the statistics and records posted by the steroid-fueled East German Olympic swimming teams during the height of the Cold War.

Further Reading

MLB Should Ban Disgraced Braun for Life

Biogenesis Scandal Demonstrates that Bud Selig and Major League Baseball Still Have not Contained the PED Problem

Cabrera's Website is as Fake as His Artificially Enhanced Body 

Cabrera Suspension Yet Another Sign that MLB's "Steroid Era" is not Over

Two Sports Ilustrated Cover Stories Detail the Sordid Legacy of Baseball's "Steroid Era" 

The Baseball Hall of Fame Should Not Honor the Tainted Career of Ivan Rodriguez

The Ryan Braun MVP Fiasco Delivers Yet Another Black Eye to MLB

MLB Should Ban Disgraced Braun for Life

Liar. Cheater. Thief. That is who Ryan Braun is and that is how he should always be remembered.

Ryan Braun looked into the cameras and lied--boldly, repeatedly and defiantly. He swore up and down that he had never taken performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). On February 24, 2012 he declared, "I would bet my life that this substance never entered my body at any point." Everyone Braun lied to, cheated and stole from would like to cash in that bet. Ryan also self-righteously said, "I tried to handle the entire situation with honor, with integrity, with class, with dignity and with professionalism because that's who I am and that's how I've always lived my life. If I had done this intentionally or unintentionally I'd be the first one to step up and say I did it." What a sad, twisted, narcissistic, ego-maniacal joke--only no one who has any sense or decency is laughing.

Ryan Braun cheated the game, himself, his teammates, the fans and opposing players. He participated in an extensive, illegal performance-enhancing drug program with the express purpose of outdoing honest competitors and being paid more money than his natural talents are worth.

Ryan Braun stole millions of dollars. He is no different from a bank robber who wears a ski mask and waves a gun. If Braun had not artificially enhanced his performance then he almost certainly would have made much less money, money that would have been paid to players who acquired their skills honestly and who posted legitimate statistics.

For some inexplicable reason, it suits the ideological perspective of certain economists and/or "stat gurus" to assert that steroids do not work but even if one disregards the scientific evidence that steroids and other PEDs work just apply Occam's Razor: why would so many elite athletes go to such lengths to take illegal drugs if these drugs did not significantly improve their performance and thus their earning power? That should be an argument that an economist can understand.

It should not be necessary to mention this but--for the benefit of anyone who may not know--since 1991 it has been against federal law to use steroids without a valid prescription. This is most assuredly NOT just an internal matter to be handled privately by various sports leagues; the PED cheaters are criminals.

Major League Baseball and Braun agreed upon a 65 game suspension that will cost Braun $3.85 million of his $9.61 million 2013 salary--but Braun gets to keep his tainted 2011 National League MVP and the tens of millions of dollars he has already stolen and he will still receive more than $100 million in salary from 2014 to 2021. MLB's settlement agreement with Braun is a sell out; it neither adequately punishes Braun for his egregious offense nor does it provide much of a deterrent for possible future offenders. PED cheaters now know that even if they get caught red-handed they can still make more than $100 million.

Rob Manfred, Executive Vice President, Economics & League Affairs for Major League Baseball, issued this ludicrous statement: "We commend Ryan Braun for taking responsibility for his past actions. We all agree that it is in the best interests of the game to resolve this matter. When Ryan returns, we look forward to him making positive contributions to Major League Baseball, both on and off the field."

What Manfred should have said is something like this: "Major League Baseball will not tolerate it when players cheat the game and cheat the fans. We will act aggressively to prevent such conduct, to punish it severely when it is discovered and to strip any PED offenders of the money and awards that they received under false pretenses. There is no place in our game for cheaters."

The only surprising thing about this is that MLB did not ask Braun what day/time he would like for his suspension to begin. Perhaps there is a certain road trip he would like to make and some cities he would like to visit before he sits out the rest of the season? Actually, since so much of what MLB does is shrouded in secrecy, we cannot be sure that MLB did not in fact let Braun choose when his suspension would start.

MLB Commissioner Bud Selig has repeatedly fumbled the PED ball and now that ball has become a massive avalanche that has destroyed the sport's record book and its credibility. The current so-called crackdown is a farce. MLB should have stripped Braun of all of his honors, awards and records, banned him for life and taken every possible measure to force him to repay his ill-gotten salary.

Until MLB completely disassociates itself from Ryan Braun and all of the other PED liars, cheaters and thieves, the sport is a joke and a sham that cannot be taken seriously by anyone who values honest and fair competition.
 
Further Reading

Biogenesis Scandal Demonstrates that Bud Selig and Major League Baseball Still Have not Contained the PED Problem

Cabrera's Website is as Fake as His Artificially Enhanced Body 

Cabrera Suspension Yet Another Sign that MLB's "Steroid Era" is not Over

Two Sports Ilustrated Cover Stories Detail the Sordid Legacy of Baseball's "Steroid Era" 

The Baseball Hall of Fame Should Not Honor the Tainted Career of Ivan Rodriguez

The Ryan Braun MVP Fiasco Delivers Yet Another Black Eye to MLB

Biogenesis Scandal Demonstrates that Bud Selig and Major League Baseball Still Have not Contained the PED Problem

Major League Baseball ignored rampant performance-enhancing drug (PED) abuse among its players in the 1990s as Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire--among many others--disgraced the sport and trashed its most hallowed records; in the 2000s MLB asserted that its PED problem had been solved but the fact that high profile players still test positive for PEDs is an indicator both that players believe that they can get away with cheating and that players believe that PEDs work, even though economists/"stat gurus" insist otherwise. The ongoing Biogenesis scandal--which implicates more than 20 MLB players for using PEDs, including admitted PED offender Alex Rodriguez and 2011 NL MVP Ryan Braun--strongly suggests that PED users continue to win major awards and lead teams to championships.

Major League Baseball's late and tepid response to rampant PED abuse illustrates that Commissioner Bud Selig's greatest flaw is that he lacks the toughness to make difficult decisions--or, to put it another way, it seems as if Selig has too much "good" Captain Kirk in his personality. If Selig had been an effective leader then he would have tackled the PED problem head on from the beginning, much like NBA Commissioner David Stern instituted a strong policy against so-called recreational drugs in the 1980s when rampant drug abuse threatened both the league's image and the league's integrity (why should anyone pay to watch people who are literally getting high on the job?).

A few MLB players had the integrity to speak out against PED use even when it was not popular to express such opinions; one of those outspoken players was Frank Thomas, whose physique never changed during his career and who was robbed of at least one MVP (in 2000) by someone who later admitted using PEDs (Jason Giambi). Thomas recently said, "When I played, guys all said, 'Let's get to the Hall of Fame.' Now guys are like, 'Let's do five years and make $150 million, and you're set for life. Who cares?' I think that's the feeling among most of the guys now. It's shameful, what's happened over the last seven, eight years with this whole scandal, but guys continue to try it. I played against Barry and Roger and I know they're Hall of Famers, but what they did at the end of their careers is going to hurt them for life, I believe. It's a sad thing, because I know how good those guys were. Barry could have been a 500-500 [home runs and steals] guy before he started doing this stuff. Really, was it necessary? He could have gone down as one of the greatest all-around players of all time, if not the greatest."

MLB's PED cheaters damaged the game, damaged the careers of the clean players and very likely damaged their own bodies as well; it is wrong to suggest that PED abuse was somehow a victimless crime or not even a crime at all: in 1988 the federal government made it illegal to use steroids without a medical prescription, so MLB's PED users since that time broke federal laws, received their inflated salaries under false pretenses and essentially stole money from the clean athletes who were not competing on a level playing field. 

It will not be easy to clean up MLB or any of the other sports leagues/federations that are infested with PED cheaters--but that is no excuse to just give up; not every thief, con man and murderer is caught, prosecuted and sent to jail but law enforcement authorities and the judicial system are still duty bound/honor bound to pursue the criminals who can be caught, prosecuted and sent to jail. 

McGwire's Admission Reaffirms How Fraudulent MLB's Record Book is

Mark McGwire has now admitted what just about everyone else already figured out several years ago: he used performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Initial reactions to McGwire's statement have run the gamut: PTI's Tony Kornheiser absurdly suggested that MLB should grant "amnesty" to PED users who issue apologies; ESPN.com's Rob Neyer attempted to justify McGwire's actions by saying that if he (Neyer) would have needed to take illegal drugs to save his writing career then he would have done it; Vincent Thomas--previously best known for asking what another media room denizen called a "crackhead question" during last year's NBA playoffs--repeatedly declared on Rome is Burning that McGwire should have saved his revelation for a book in order to "get paid." In other words, while McGwire used drugs to enhance his physical performance a lot of writers and commentators act like they have taken drugs that are impairing their mental performance. One voice of reason is Sports Illustrated's Lee Jenkins, who correctly concludes that McGwire "was not a victim of the steroid era, as his statement implies. He was the most obvious creation of it."

I have extensively covered the PED issue (check out the Steroids/Performance-Enhancing Drugs section in the right hand sidebar of BEST's main page for a complete archive of my articles about this subject), debunking the ludicrous assertion that steroids don't work and repeatedly stating that PED users should be banned and should have their records vacated. A few months ago in a post titled Revelations About Sosa Show That MLB Must Fumigate the Record Book I wrote:

All of the players who have been caught by the drug testers, outed in the Mitchell Report or otherwise reliably linked to illegal PED use should either be removed from the record book completely--much like the NCAA "vacates" results by programs that cheated--or, at the very least, listed separately under a heading that indicates that their numbers are fraudulent to some degree. If the Players Association or individual players complain, then MLB should invite the aggrieved parties to file a lawsuit and then testify under oath that they are clean; that way, those players will open themselves up to criminal charges of perjury. Somehow I doubt that Bonds, McGwire, Sosa and crew will be interested in placing themselves in that kind of jeopardy.

There are two reasons why MLB must act so forcefully:

1) It is important to be fair to the players--past and present--who did not cheat.
2) The two main reasons that the cheaters cheated were to get paid and to establish a place for themselves in history (Sosa just smugly spoke about being elected to the Hall of Fame because of his great numbers); the best message that MLB can send to young baseball players is that cheaters do not prosper and that when they are caught all of their numbers are nullified.

Six of the top 15 players on MLB's career home run list have been linked to PEDs, including leader Barry Bonds and the sixth ranked Sammy Sosa, plus Mark McGwire and Alex Rodriguez, who are currently tied for eighth-ninth. Those cheaters--plus the 11th ranked Rafael Palmeiro--pushed clean, Hall of Fame sluggers Reggie Jackson and Mike Schmidt out of the top 10 in the sport's most glamorous statistical category, while cheater Manny Ramirez currently sits just two home runs behind Schmidt and only trails Jackson by 17 home runs. During Monday night's SportsCenter, John Kruk--a three-time All-Star who candidly conceded that he was not an "elite" player--said that the more that comes out about the "Steroid Era" the angrier he becomes. Kruk noted that he and other clean players were essentially playing "naked" while apparently a substantial number of "elite" players benefited from using illegal drugs. Kruk added that he cannot help but wonder what kind of numbers he and other clean players might have put up had the playing field been level. It is worth noting that PED usage not only warped statistics but also had a huge economic impact, because the cheaters reaped tremendous financial gains and the trickle down effect of their profits is that the clean stars earned less than they otherwise would have, the clean above average players who potentially could have been stars lost those opportunities and, clearly, some clean fringe players who might have been just good enough to play in the majors had their dreams completely shattered.

It cannot be emphasized enough that MLB's record book has been completely fraudulent for quite some time. The Olympics and the track and field authorities have responded to their steroid/PED scandals by wiping out the records/honors won by cheaters like Marion Jones and at some point MLB Commissioner Bud Selig--or his successor--must take a similar action.

McGwire's statement is carefully crafted but it is as fraudulent as MLB's record book. McGwire likely composed his remarks with the cooperation and help of MLB authorities in order to cast himself and the sport's decision makers in the best possible light (such as McGwire's assertion, "Baseball is really different now--it's been cleaned up. The commissioner and the players' association implemented testing and they cracked down, and I'm glad they did"). McGwire declares, "I did this for health purposes. There's no way I did this for any type of strength use" and adds "I wish I had never played during the steroid era." The first statement is a lie and the second statement is a cop out. Steroids and HGH--the substances that McGwire has belatedly admitted that he ingested for the better part of a decade during the height of his career, including the 1998 season when he shattered Roger Maris' single-season home run record--help to build strength and thus enhance performance; that is why they are called performance-enhancing drugs--and to assert anything else is about as scientifically valid as saying that the Earth is flat. We all know that superior hand-eye coordination is required to hit major league pitching and that PEDs do not improve those skills--but the point is that if you already possess those skills and then augment that natural talent with unnatural strength your performance (and thus your statistics, particularly in the power categories) will be greatly enhanced.

It is transparently clear why McGwire made his admission now:

1) Next season he will be a hitting coach for the St. Louis Cardinals and if he had not said something prior to the season then he would surely have been bombarded by questions about steroids/PEDs every day. McGwire issued his statement during the height of the NFL playoffs, hoping to minimize the amount of coverage that it gets and hoping that by the time Spring Training rolls around he can declare that this is old news and, reprising his infamous line, that he "does not want to talk about the past." McGwire says that now he is willing to answer questions about his PED use--but let's see just how long this willingness lasts and how forthcoming he really is; look for McGwire to do a handful of teary-eyed interviews with carefully selected media sycophants before he quickly clams up, says that he has nothing to add to his prepared statement and gruffly requests that all he wants to talk about is his future as a hitting coach.

2) Forgiveness is deeply entrenched in American culture, so McGwire has reason to believe that his chances of being elected to the Hall of Fame are better now that he has belatedly admitted the truth; clearly, his vote totals during his first several years of eligibility suggest that without such an admission he had little chance of being inducted, so in this regard he has everything to gain and nothing to lose, as can be seen by the early reactions of Kornheiser and Neyer referenced above.

It appears that Commissioner Selig is eager to welcome McGwire back into an active role in MLB but Selig's warm embrace of the man who cheated his fans and his employers out of tens of millions of dollars, who cheated Maris out of the single season home run record that Maris worked so hard to obtain and whose successful cheating clearly inspired the subsequent cheating by Bonds and others raises several important questions: for starters, when is Selig going to accept Pete Rose's similarly belated apology for betting on baseball? There is no evidence or indication that Rose's gambling had anything to do with his playing career, a stark contrast to how McGwire built his legacy squarely on PED use (while some can argue that Bonds was a Hall of Fame caliber player prior to his PED use, McGwire--by his own admission--used PEDs throughout his career). Furthermore, the only reason that Rose is not in the Hall of Fame now is that the HoF--under great pressure from MLB--made a grossly unfair postfacto decision after MLB suspended Rose that players on the suspended list may not be put on the HoF ballot. How can Selig possibly justify praising McGwire while leaving Rose in limbo? Another question that must be asked is why is MLB in such a rush to canonize McGwire but is making no such apparent efforts regarding Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro and the other black and Latino PED users? Again, let me emphasize that in my opinion every single PED user--white, black, Latino or any other color/ethnicity--should be banned and should have his statistics "vacated." However, if MLB is going to absolve McGwire while ignoring all of the black/Latino PED-using record breakers then MLB certainly seems to be applying a racist double standard (not that this would be the first time MLB would be guilty of doing that).

Jose Canseco--an admitted steroid cheater whose tell-all books revealed just how rampant PED use has been in MLB, despite vigorous denials by Bonds, McGwire, Palmeiro and others--is one of the few honest men in Major League Baseball concerning the justly named "Steroid Era." That tells you all you need to know about the state of the sport and about the disastrous reign of Bud Selig, the man who has presided over the destruction of MLB's most cherished legacy, its record book.

Lesson #1 From the Ongoing Steroids Saga: Don't Lie to the Feds

Elvis Presley once sang, "You can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes." The federal government's motto in many instances--ranging from the Martha Stewart case to the ongoing performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) saga--seems to be, "You can do anything but don't lie to federal agents." As far as I know, no elite athlete has yet gone to jail for using PEDs, which are illegal without a doctor's prescription--but Marion Jones is about to go to jail for lying about her PED use and Barry Bonds, Miguel Tejada and others--including Roger Clemens if he is not telling the truth--may eventually be incarcerated for lying as well. At least as far back as President Nixon's administration we have heard the cliche "It's not the crime that gets you in trouble; it's the cover up" and we are certainly seeing plenty of examples of that now. Tejada must have been the most surprised person in America when his name jumped to center stage during Tuesday's hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee regarding the Mitchell Report. Representatives Henry Waxman and Tom Davis asked the Justice Department to investigate whether Tejada lied when he was questioned in 2005 during the Rafael Palmeiro perjury investigation. Of course, this little drama within the wider scandal began when Palmeiro wagged his finger toward committee members and swore that he had never used steroids. After Palmeiro flunked a drug test, he fingered Tejada as the source of what he took, which Palmeiro still maintains he did not know to be steroids. Tejada denies using steroids, but the Mitchell Report produced two checks that Tejada wrote to his then-teammate Adam Piatt, who told Mitchell's investigators that he obtained steroids and human growth hormone for Tejada.

After the Mitchell Report was issued, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig almost broke his arm patting himself on the back for how well he has handled the PED issue. John Fahey, the President of the World-Anti Doping Agency (WADA), is not nearly as impressed with the measures--or lack thereof--that Selig is taking: "Professional baseball's response to Senator Mitchell's report is baffling. To suggest that it might continue to keep its anti-doping testing program in house...is demeaning to Senator Mitchell and the congressional committees who view doping as a serious threat to public health." That is really the crux of the matter. I realize that some fans say "Who cares?" and question why Congress is getting involved in this situation but this is absolutely a serious public health issue. Considering that MLB has obviously handled this matter completely ineptly for the better part of two decades, it is actually overdue that Congress steps in and tries to assert some control here. This is not simply a matter of letting Barry Bonds do whatever he wants to do with his body because he will face the consequences: all of society will pay a steep price if PED usage spreads from a few thousand pro athletes to millions of young, amateur athletes, a process that has already begun because the cheaters have made it difficult to perform at an elite level without joining their ranks.

In addition to the public health concerns, there is also the issue that sports should be conducted on a fair, level playing field (pardon the pun) without certain athletes gaining an advantage through criminal actions. Representative Betty McCollum eloquently addressed this aspect of the scandal: "Fixed games played by drug users illegitimately altered the outcome of the games. It's my opinion we're here in the middle of a criminal conspiracy that defrauded millions of baseball fans of billions of dollars." Selig and his partner in crime Donald Fehr, the head of the MLB Players Association, are very proud of how much MLB's revenues have soared under their watch--but, as Rep. McCollum stated, those funds were raised under false pretenses. Fraud and drug trafficking are two of the crimes covered under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. I'm no lawyer but if it can be proven that Selig and/or Fehr either actively knew about rampant PED use in MLB or were grossly negligent in trying to prevent such criminal activities because those activities were generating revenue for MLB then why can't the government prosecute Selig, Fehr and anyone else involved in what McCollum rightly called a "criminal conspiracy"? I realize that such a prosecution is unlikely to ever happen but think about the powerful message it would send.

Was that Bud Selig Talking--or Was it Mark McGwire?

In the wake of the publication of the Mitchell Report, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig sounded like he was channeling Mark McGwire's ill-fated appearance before Congress. McGwire infamously said, "I'm not here to talk about the past." Selig uttered virtually the same thing, echoing something that Senator Mitchell said earlier during his press conference when he officially released his findings: "Letting go of the past is hard, but it's often a necessary step if you are gonna deal with the problem in the future. I don't think baseball now needs to spend the next several years rummaging around in the past trying to find every single person who ever used performance-enhancing substances and try to punish them. I think what they need to do is to look to the future. How can you best prevent this from occurring in the future?"

If MLB is not going to at least try to figure out what happened in the past and do something to preserve the sanctity of its record book then why commission the Mitchell Report in the first place? Otherwise, this whole thing is just a dog and pony show so that Selig can shrug his shoulders and say that he did the best that he could to deal with the steroids issue, kind of like the impotent gesture he offered at the end of the 2002 All-Star Game that ended in a tie.

At his press conference, Selig came off, as usual, sounding like a well-meaning buffoon. Selig looked like the substitute teacher who can't believe that the students are firing spitballs behind his back and who can't figure out how to identify and punish the perpetrators. Of course, this situation is a lot more serious than spitballs. The integrity of the sport is at stake, as is the health and welfare of young athletes who look up to professional athletes and who feel compelled to take performance-enhancing drugs to keep up with their peers and to be like the stars who they admire.

Selig said that he has not read the complete report--which is odd since he commissioned it in the first place and will be charged with dealing with its aftermath--and he kept repeating his mantra about bringing closure to what happened in the past so that MLB can now look toward the future. The performance-enhancing drug (PED) using cheaters won World Series titles and MVPs while setting numerous records. The MLB record book is now covered in steroid-soaked graffiti and that mess must be cleaned up. Track and field has taken a great step by striking Marion Jones' results from its record books. Here is what MLB should do, at the very least: every single player who MLB has good reason to believe to be a cheater should have a giant "M" (for "Mitchell Report") placed by his career statistics. When more cheaters are discovered in years to come (keep in mind how long it took to find out what Jones did), put an "M" by their names, too. Anyone who consults the record book should be informed in no uncertain terms that those numbers are tainted. It may never be possible to completely restore the record book to a pristine state but MLB owes the fans something more than saying that we should not "talk about the past."

Sometimes it is said that steroids were not banned by MLB until 2002. That disregards the fact that steroids and PEDs are illegal to use without a prescription but the Mitchell Report goes even further by noting that MLB's 1971 drug policy prohibited the use of prescription medication without a valid prescription and that steroids were explicitly mentioned in the sport's 1991 drug policy: "Steroids have been listed as a prohibited substance under the Major League Baseball drug policy since then," the Mitchell Report flatly states; what changed in 2002 is that the owners and the players union agreed on a drug testing plan for the first time.

No one should buy the argument that if MLB cannot identify every single player who used PEDs that it should not punish anyone. If the police cannot catch every single criminal then should all criminals be set free? It just does not work that way. If you break an MLB rule--and break the law on top of it--then you run the risk of being caught, being publicly embarrassed and being punished.

Roger Clemens is the most prominent player mentioned in the Mitchell Report other than Barry Bonds. Already, some people are claiming that Bonds has been the victim of racism because he has been pilloried for years, while Clemens has received a free pass. The flaw in this thinking is that Bonds' name emerged years ago in the Balco proceedings; after that, the book Game of Shadows made an overwhelming case that Bonds cheated and that his cheating played a major role in increasing his production. Until now, no such case could be made against Clemens but now that his name is in the Mitchell Report he should be subjected to the same scrutiny that Bonds has faced; in fact, at least one writer has already declared that Clemens is no different than Bonds. Prior to publishing his report, Mitchell informed Clemens of the information that he had obtained about him and offered him an opportunity to defend himself and Clemens declined, so don't pay any attention to sob stories coming from Clemens' camp about how unfair it is that his name is mentioned in the report.

Selig has never accepted responsibility for his own role in this mess. He presided over the sport when a labor stoppage canceled the 1994 postseason and then he and his minions looked the other way as PED usage proliferated because the resulting home runs filled the owners' coffers and put MLB back on the map after that 1994 fiasco. The end result is that the owners got rich, Selig got rich, the players got rich and few of the guilty parties will ever pay a price for what they have done to the national pastime. Who got stuck with the bill for all of this? The fans who bought tickets, MLB licensed merchandise and the products advertised during TV broadcasts of MLB games. Come next spring, the stadiums will be full, the cash registers will be ringing and all will likely be forgiven and forgotten. Maybe Bud Selig actually is smarter than he looks--he and his sport have not only perpetrated a huge fraud on the American public but became fabulously wealthy while doing so.