Barry Bonds? Public Enemy Number One! Bud Selig? Hall of Famer!
Hey, remember that time Bud Selig oversaw an era?
The HOF website’s summary of the Selig Era is a model of anodyne understatement: “Allan H. ‘Bud’ Selig was Baseball’s ninth commissioner, serving as acting commissioner starting in 1992 before being named commissioner in 1998. Selig oversaw two rounds of expansion, the creation of Wild Card playoff teams and inter-league play as well as the creation of the World Baseball Classic.”
It’s an incomplete summation of the man and his tenure. Selig not only oversaw the game’s greatest geographic expansion, he led the game’s greatest sustained economic expansion (per Graham Womack at the Sporting News, annual revenues went from $2 billion to $9 billion under his watch, a compound annual growth rate of about 8%). He negotiated and approved landmark television and merchandising deals, and led baseball’s “early adopter” efforts with regard to streaming technology (it was reported that the Walt Disney Company took a stake in MLB Advanced Media; while details weren’t made public, it was estimated that the deal values the company at $3.5 billion).
He also redefined the role of commissioner, transforming it from a benevolent dictatorship charged with upholding the integrity of the game (and keeping the owners’ avarice from running amok), to that of a chief executive role, charged with managing the business and growing the bottom line. A former owner, Selig saw his role as one of maximizing returns for his shareholders (the owners) — and in this regard, he was superb at his job. By the only measure that mattered to his constituents, Selig was the most successful Commissioner the game has ever known.
Of course, Selig was also acting commissioner when the most calamitous work-stoppage (1994–1995) in the history of the game took place (he was firmly in the corner of ownership). He is the only commissioner to preside over an October without a World Series. He, like every other owner in the 1980s, engaged in collusion to restrict free agency and artificially suppress player salaries.
And it is under his leadership that the use of performance-enhancing drugs proliferated throughout the game.
Selig has always denied having any knowledge of the scope of the PED scourge prior to the findings presented in the Mitchell Report (a position he maintains in his recently-published memoir), and he is quick to tout his anti-PED credentials when the topic is broached.
It was Selig, after all, who commissioned Mitchell in the wake of Jose Canseco’s blockbuster memoir; it was Selig who pushed through new rules forbidding the use of steroids and other substances; and it was Selig who instituted the testing procedures and penalties that have, undeniably, reduced usage rates across baseball. His supporters will tell you that once Selig learned, to his great surprise and chagrin, of baseball’s PED infestation, he took every measure to rid the game of a potentially existential pest (now seems like a good time to point out that baseball didn’t test for steroids or other PEDs prior to 2003).
Is it possible Bud Selig didn’t know anything about the rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs throughout the sport he oversaw? Sure. Anything is possible. It’s certainly plausible — even likely — that Selig wasn’t aware of the true scale of PED use throughout baseball. But to claim total ignorance — while at the same time marketing and promoting your home-run heroes — seems a stretch.
Because if you believe Bud Selig didn’t know anything about the rampant drug use that defined MLB culture and propelled attendance and revenue records, you believe Selig’s corporate lieutenants didn’t know.
If you believe MLB executives didn’t know, you believe none of the 30 owners knew what was happening on their respective clubs.
If you believe the owners were ignorant, then you might buy that general managers and operations staff were also in the dark.
If you believe GMs were in the dark, then you’d buy the theory that managers and coaches were also blissfully unaware of what was going on in the clubhouse.
If you believe managers were unaware of what was happening, then you would concede that the medical personnel, trainers and nutritionists employed by every club had no idea that players were using.
Which means you might buy the notion that the hundreds of players actively using PEDs over the course of the “Selig Era” (roughly 1994–2006) were islands unto themselves; you believe they didn’t talk to each other; you believe they didn’t compare drug regimens, or workout plans, or reliable sources for the chemicals they were ingesting and injecting.
Of course, the far more likely explanation is that a number of people at every level of MLB — from the clubhouse to the Commissioner’s office — knew, to varying degrees, about PED use (including the writers who covered the game; amphetamines were openly distributed in major league locker rooms for decades).
They all knew, and they didn’t care. And why should they? Juiced players led to juiced ratings and attendance, which led to juiced revenues and a juiced bottom line. Everybody benefited. Everybody was happy.
Until they weren’t.
We all know what happened next: Records fell. Suspensions were served. BALCO. Biogenesis. Congressional testimony. Finger-wagging. “The Cream and the Clear.” A HOF electorate that took it upon themselves to sift through the wreckage and apply judgement via the ballot.
Selig, to a large degree, cleaned up the mess MLB made of itself on his watch. But this was janitorial service. He did nothing to prevent the spill; he only mopped it up. Fair or not, it is his visage — not the scowling Bonds or the smiling Sosa — that should serve as the face of the “steroid era.”
Bud Selig in 2016 was elected to the baseball’s Hall of Fame — and he deserves the honor. He is, for better and for worse, among the most influential and important figures in the game’s history.
For better or worse, it’s appropriate that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens — the leading products of the era Selig led — join him as members of baseball’s most exclusive club.
