Whether or not you like Bud Selig (is there anyone who is a baseball fan who actually likes him?), you have to stop and commend him for being willing to put the Ghost of Baseball Past under the microscope. Yes, he likely has motivations that tie directly to improving history's view of his legacy. Yes, the right thing to do would've been to have stood up to the union on this issue 10 years ago. But I'd like to think that a person has a shot at redemption, no matter how late it is.
The easy thing for Selig would've been to have just gone all Mark McGwire and said, "The past is the past. I want to be positive." But he didn't. Look, I've got no love for Selig and like I said, his motivation for sending Mitchell out to do the digging is certainly anything but altruistic, but at least he did something. Will it be enough to rescue his precious legacy? I don't think so. I don't think you ever truly get a mulligan on this type of thing.
In just 10 minutes or so, George Mitchell is going to raise the curtain and give us a peek behind the dark past of baseball (although to think that it's over with no test for HGH is naive). Names will be named and the question then becomes, do so many players from this generation wind up being negated in baseball history? Even if they name 80 players in this investigation, it won't include everyone from the generation who used. Mitchell had a key contact in the former Mets batboy, but he wasn't supplying for everyone in the sport. So does Roger Clemens, who is reportedly named in the report, become a non-factor when the Hall of Fame ballots are cast when he is eligible? I think he does.
I guess that I'm just not 100 percent sure that this does much for the sport without Selig stepping in and saying that he's also adding testing for HGH as well. I find it really strange that the sport supposedly has testing now for steroids, but HGH is completely overlooked when people talk about performance enhancing drugs being out of baseball.
The thing is, if you're going to pull back the curtain on the past, you might as well make sure that your present affairs are perfectly clean. And there is no way to do that until the testing policies reflect the desire to clean up the game.
It's a sad day, but I also realize it will not come close to covering the width and breadth of the issue.
