Selig Can't Stop Rambling Incoherently About Steroids
Writers stuck figuring out Hall of Fame votes
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Helpful is Bud Selig's middle name.
Bud Selig has a way of making us irrationally angry even when he doesn't deserve it. He's not an evil man. He's not openly malicious. He clearly loves baseball, as we do, and does what he thinks is best for the game. It's just that so often, the way he presents those views -- the bumbling manner in which he seems to somehow make every PR problem worse -- is infuriating.
The latest example is a goodie. The Chicago chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America decided to gather at the All-Star Game and consider a matter of relative importance: steroids and Hall of Fame voting. It's questionable whether any good was going to come out of this meeting in the first place, but hey, at least they're trying.
Chicago Sun-Times writer Rick Telander proposed forming a 10-person committee, along with representatives from the Hall of Fame, to determine guidelines for writers when evaluating players with proven or suspected connections to steroids. His proposal was voted down, 30-25. How does Bud Selig feel about this? Try to parse this quote:
"That I'm going to leave to all of you," he told writers. "You all have to make your own decisions. I would not, however, disregard history. That's a very fair question, and I understand it's bothering a lot of people. But you'll have to make your own judgment."
Thanks, Bud! You managed to communicate about five different ideas -- personal efficacy, responsibility, respect for the past, disrespect for the past, ambivalence -- there, many of which are completely opposed to one another. Just another day at the office, we guess.
As for the writers, the solution here is pretty simple: forget the 'roids. Really. Forget them. We will never be able to definitively figure out which players used steroids and which players didn't; it could have been everyone, for all we know. Are we to reward 'roiders who didn't get caught with a Hall of Fame vote? Punish those who were caught up in an an era for which we're all -- fans, media, players, owners -- responsible? What's more, there's no definitive scientific evidence that steroids even make you a better baseball player. We don't know anything.
Voting for the Hall of Fame is in itself a bit of a silly enterprise, but it's important to a lot of people. Good for Telander and company for making the effort, but it's going to be fruitless. We don't know anything. The quicker Hall of Fame voters realize that, the better off the entire process will be.
Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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Posted Thursday, Jul 16, 2009 - 6:55 PM EST
