Plenty of shame to share in steroid story

Alex Rodriguez appeared to chuckle as he was being led to the guillotine Tuesday.

Perhaps, it was the thought of former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura - an admitted steroid user - calling for Commissioner Bud Selig to be indicted.

Maybe it was because he heard Selig say A-Rod "shamed the game.''

Or it could be that the abhorrent hypocrisy of it all was too much to keep Rodriguez from anything less than a smirk.

Rodriguez didn't laugh at all Tuesday as he knelt before reporters and apologized again, begged for fan forgiveness and fell on his players association sword.

Rodriguez knows that through it all, Selig collects another $18 million this year and somehow skates past the drug-abuse abyss, staying above the filth by going on the attack and insisting he has been the champion of drug testing for two decades.

Yet, this is the same Selig who sat in front of Congress four years ago and acted like he'd never even heard the word "steroids'' before.

So how do you not laugh?

While the players association and team owners are just as culpable, it is gut-busting laughable that Selig on the one hand says he wanted to rid the game of drugs but that the union wouldn't let him.

On the other hand, and at most other times, he has feigned complete ignorance and claimed no one knew anything untoward was occurring before, during or after the Summer of Sam and Mark, despite McGwire admitting he took andro in '98 and Sosa gaining 40 pounds of muscle the preceding winter.

It wouldn't be shocking if he said tomorrow that he never heard of McGwire or Sosa. How do you argue with someone who pretends reality is whatever he decides is convenient today?

Five years after the Great Home Run Race That Saved Baseball From Ruin And Mankind From Asteroids, there still was only "survey'' testing in '03 - during which A-Rod tested positive - because the truth is nobody wanted the game rid of drugs, certainly not the owners, union or commissioner.

Genuine testing and severe penalties weren't in place until 2006, and that occurred only because of pressure from Congress.

Meanwhile, during the eight years after Sosa-McGwire there were plenty of A-Rods and Barry Bonds who decided that if you can't beat 'em, cheat with 'em.

Despite that, Selig says he wouldn't change anything he has done and that he's proud of baseball's progress.

What's stunning is his belief that he can rewrite history, though Jesse Ventura clearly disagrees.

"You can't tell me for one minute that Bud Selig and the owners didn't know," Ventura told a Denver TV station. "They were profiting from (steroids).

"Baseball was dead in the water until the big home run race between McGwire and Sosa. - That rejuvenated baseball (and) made all the profits so Bud Selig could make $17 million a year.''

Ventura's point about the owners is one that's often forgotten, and while he didn't mention union boss Don Fehr and the players association, all share the blame and all "shamed the game.''

The owners wanted the big ticket and concession sales, the players association wanted fat contracts, and Bud Selig wanted to be the king of kings, and super rich on top of it.

Selig, unfairly, gets most of the blame, when there are a few dozen men who had the power and instead chose wild prosperity and promotion of the home run craze.

But Selig may sense today that the history books will paint him with the brush of drugs, that he will be known as the "Steroid Commissioner'' and that his chances for Cooperstown are as distant as those of McGwire and Sosa.

So he blasts A-Rod and all Selig detractors, but every time he rips a player or defends his record by attacking his critics, he forces us to look back at the presiding role he played in promoting drugs in baseball, in encouraging widespread abuse and the reality of steroids in the game.

That's nothing like the version Bud Selig wants us to remember.

So it might be better for him - and for everyone involved - if he would just stop doing that.

brozner@dailyherald.com