FanNation - The Republic of Sport

"Power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages"- Rudyard Kipling

It is so often said by the media that "The Steroid Era" is the player's fault at large. That sort of an assertion is rather dubious in true nature. It is also said by the (supposed) Jesus of Nazareth that one must be marked openly for their beliefs. Brothers and Sisters, I urge you to not take ESPN's word for everything; that is, that the players are fully responsible for their use of PED's. 

Whatever baseball stood for in the late 1990's-early 2000's was the stewing of a money making racket by Allan Huber "Bud" Selig, built on increasing revenue from the time where obvious cheaters Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were catching uneducated peoples' attention from political news and covering up whatever mess he had made from allowing such negativity toward the sport. Bud Selig is the mirror-image of Pete Rose when it comes to anti-integrity (though in contrasting fields of work); both couldn't own up completely when approach. To be baby-sat by Congress multiple times is rather absurd and irrational. If there ever was a situation that involve insider trading, not one baseball fan would ever care about possible economic consequences. Yet the same could be true as to why, the people of the United States, have to pay for Bud Selig's consequences and other Congressional Hearings with our tax money if millions of people aren't even juicing?

Those of us who believe in the enlightment will say that the conflict of steroids is almost like the federal government's decisions on legalizing marijuana. Both drugs have had good use for medical purposes and doctors are able to prescribe them to patients depending on what the state's legislation says. Although there has never been any reported death on marijuana use, steroids have had linked deaths and have had controversy because the people using steroids perhaps aren't using the right dostage. This is in no possible way advocating any drug use: I in fact do not use drugs because drugs distort my rational thinking. However, in the United States, freedom comes first and if anyone wants to use any of the drugs, it is not anyone's business. It does become interest when athletes are using them to cheat.

Which leads me to baseball's Dick Cheney, Donald Fehr. I know that the media would rather want to praise the man's work with the union. However, the stain on his shirt is more-so of a black hole on baseball, a plague that infects people's thinking and never goes away. Bob Klapisch, in The Record this Tuesday, summed it up best in his own piece:

"Donald Fehr will be remembered for successfully turning the players' association into the world's richest entity of professional athletes...

But Fehr's legacy will be forever tainted by the steroids scandal.

The union's reluctance to recognize how widespread juicing had become was Fehr's fault; he was the enabler of an entire culture of cheaters, obsessed with protecting the players' privacy.

As a result, baseball is only now emerging from its darkest era - and who knows for sure if HGH isn't as prevalent as steroids were 10 years ago?

Fehr never fought hard enough to keep the game clean. As a result, we have Barry Bonds as the home run champion, and Roger Clemens trying to stave off federal indictment.
Throw in A-Rod, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, to name a few, and you have a fine idea why Fehr won't be missed."

How big is that stain on his legacy, to be in the same pool along with a class of lost causes for baseball? How could you have let the problem become so massive that we can't even guarantee that the 89 name's in the Mitchell Report or the 104 names in the Annoymous Tests are all of the athletes account for? We will probably never know the entire truth and it is a rather good thing, because although baseball is engrained in our American culture, it is second to what is more newsworthy. 

Klapisch gave Fehr's future, forever marked by his beliefs to stand by the players instead of honesty. As for Bud Selig, I believe it is a pity there isn't a way to ban a commissioner from the hall of fame.