Posted: Wednesday April 19, 2006; Updated: Wednesday April 19, 2006
Bud Selig probably won't have a lot of options when it finally comes down to punishing those involved in the Steroid Era. Heck, by the time the commissioner finds out what has gone on in the past 15 or 20 years -- if he ever finds out -- Barry Bonds and many of those accused in this performance-enhanced soap opera may be long, long gone from the game.
Remember this: When former commissioner Bart Giamatti asked John Dowd to probe the gambling allegations surrounding Pete Rose in the late 1980s, the investigation lasted six months. Baseball's just-launched inquiry into the Steroid Era threatens to make that look like a pop quiz.
"This is 10 times, maybe 50 times more difficult," Fay Vincent, Giamatti's deputy during the Rose investigation, said from his Connecticut home on Tuesday. "I would guess it would take at least a year."
Maybe, he said, as long as two years.
Still, if Selig follows Vincent's lead, if baseball's investigation produces anything of note, Selig eventually will do something. He'll have to do something.
At least he's finally pointing in the right direction.
"I think baseball is definitely doing the right thing. They might have been slow in getting there, but they got there," said Vincent, who succeeded Giamatti and served as commissioner from 1989 to '92. "I think baseball has to get back on the moral high ground."
Vincent is in a unique position in all this. It was his June 7, 1991, memo that first put steroids on baseball's list of banned substances. (The memo was, for all practical purposes, meaningless. It didn't pertain to players because the union didn't agree to it. Still, it was baseball's first known official acknowledgment that steroids were dangerous.) So not only was Vincent on watch when the Steroid Era was in its infancy, he also has remained a studied observer of the game since then.
He's been a longtime critic of Selig, the former owner with whom he often butted heads, and of what has happened to the game under Selig's leadership. But Vincent knows, better than most, the problems Selig faces. The ex-commish went through plenty of tough times in his brief tenure, though nothing as potentially damaging to the game. He has a pretty good idea of what Selig can and can't do with the steroids scandal.
Selig, in truth, could learn a few things from Vincent's experiences.
In June 1992, for instance, months before owners forced him out as commissioner, Vincent permanently suspended the Yankees' Steve Howe for violating baseball's drug policy. The pitcher had pleaded guilty to attempting to possess cocaine. It was his seventh violation. So Vincent booted him.
The union appealed the suspension and an arbitrator overturned Vincent's decision. But the point was made.
"I was right," Vincent said.
Selig could have similar choices. If the strongly reported allegations in the book Game of Shadows, centering on Bonds' use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, are found to be credible -- after reading the book last weekend, Vincent believes they are -- and if baseball's investigation, headed by former Senator George Mitchell, turns up similar wrongdoing, Selig may be forced to act.
According to Vincent, Selig probably won't be able to use the commissioner's "best interests of the game" powers to suspend Bonds or other players. Vincent used the "best interests" hammer on a couple of occasions, the last when he tried to realign the Cubs into the National League West, a move that the owners overturned and used to force Vincent's resignation.
But Vincent calls that particular tool "irrelevant" in regard to players. Federal protections afforded the players under the collective bargaining agreement between the players' union and the owners make the "best interests" power meaningless, he said.
Selig probably won't be able to immediately suspend someone because of legal problems off the field, either, such as the perjury charges that Bonds may face. Players are afforded the same legal rights as anyone else in those cases, so baseball will have to wait its turn.
"I don't think you can do anything," Vincent said, "until the criminal case is over, or until the Mitchell investigation is over."
Once the legal matters are settled and once Mitchell's investigation is concluded, something can be gained by handing down a suspension if it's warranted, Vincent said, even if it's wiped out on appeal.
When he suspended Howe, Vincent had a pretty good idea his decision would be overturned. But he did it anyway, forcing the union and an arbitrator to undo what was widely viewed as the correct call.
The point was made. It'll be up to Selig, when and if the time ever comes, to make his.
Until then, we'll be forced to wait and see what this investigation uncovers. That's the first step, and maybe the most critical.
Mitchell has not yet contacted Vincent in regard to the inquiry, but if this thing is to be the least bit legitimate, he will. He should put Selig high on his list, too, and, as Vincent suggests, Kevin Hallinan, the senior vice president for security for Major League Baseball, who has been in the game throughout the Steroid Era.
Anyone and everyone with any knowledge of what happened, or what didn't, needs to be interviewed. Those who don't want to talk should be persuaded to speak up, by any means possible.
Then, some day, we'll know what happened. Then, maybe, we can get on with baseball after the Steroid Era.
"Now I watch Bonds and the ball is falling just short of the track.... I have to conclude that he's maybe not using the stuff. But I'd like to know," Vincent said. "I'd like to know what baseball knew in the '80s, in the '90s. I really don't know. I hope Mitchell is going to find out."
Maybe we'll all find out. It'll be later rather than sooner. But, hopefully, we'll get there.
