Editorial: Bad timing by Selig, By: David Wolman

April 6, 2006

Take me out to the ballgame. Buy me some peanuts and two syringes. So, let's root, root, root for Bud Selig. If he conducted player steroid testing four years year earlier, it would not have been a shame for the sport. One, two, three strikes you are banned from Major League Baseball for-e-ver.

Singing the seventh-inning stretch with a ballpark organist creates a care-free feeling, a melody that leaves your personal problems at home.

Selig's announcement on March 30 to launch a probe into the alleged distribution of steroids by companies such as BALCO has changed the harmonious classic into a low-toned, scandalous version that could be called, "Take me to the courthouse."

If this investigation would have begun four years ago, even before the start of the 2005 season when team owners and the MLB Player's Association ratified an agreement to conduct tests and suspend those athletes who tested positive a minimum of 10 days, the game's reputation and name would not have suffered the serious blow it has now.

This at a time when Major League Baseball experienced a new attendance record in 2005, breaking the old record in 2004 (73,023,000) by over 1.9 million fans. The Minnesota Twins, who might move out of Minneapolis at the end of the 2005 season because of a lack of tax-payer support to build a new stadium, brought two million fans into the aging Metrodome for the first time since 1993. The Washington Nationals, playing in the NFL's Redskins' old home, RFK Stadium, averaged over 33,000 fans per game.

Instead of watching highlights of Barry Bonds, who will no longer be sponsored by Bank of America if he breaks Hank Aaron's home run record this season, hit home runs into McCovey Cove or Jason Giambi line a double into the right field corner of Yankee Stadium, television and radio stations will be providing press conferences of subpoenas being handed down to athletes.

They do not even deserve to be in a court room.

Athletes who used steroids should be not be apologizing to Selig or former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who is in charge of the investigation into steroid use and obtainment, but to the fans who flock to the ballparks and athletes who played the game the way it is supposed to be, clean.

Aaron, Babe Ruth, Johnny Bench and Willie Mays played the game with natural strength.

Aaron even stated that he will not support Bonds in his home run quest because he is opposed to someone using growth supplements to build his game.

Apologies should be made in person by doping athletes to the fans who pay to see them play.

We spend our hard-earned dollars to watch you play, not sit behind the camera in denial.

Denial that will lead America's past time into the wood shed.

The NFL started to conduct random tests in 1989 for banned performance enhancing drugs, a period of time when steroids began showing up in the underground markets. Over the past five seasons, less than one-percent of its athletes have tested positive.

Baseball has come in too late to fix its problem, though.

Astericks and question marks will be surround the stat sheets in the modern baseball era.

MLB should have cleaned this problem four years ago to safe face.