With today’s publication of ‘Game Of Shadows’, the Chicago Sun-Times’ Jay Mariotti (above) feels he’s waited long enough for Major League Baseball to act.
I don’t want Bonds to pass Babe Ruth or break Henry Aaron’s record. I would like him to take his perpetual scowl, smarmy denials and Paula Abdul wig and immediately get out of our lives forever. I also would like the man who purportedly runs the so-called national pastime to feel the same way. The very nanosecond he heard about Game of Shadows, which alleges Bonds’ rampant steroid use in comprehensive detail, Selig should have ordered the Incredible Sulk to his Milwaukee office, surrounded him with an intimidating phalanx of authorities and power attorneys and baseball legends and demanded to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. You know, about Winstrol, Clomid, Deca-Durabolin, human growth hormone, insulin, the cream, the clear, trenbolone and anything else he may or may not have injected, swallowed, rubbed on his skin or placed on his tongue.
But two weeks have passed without an announcement or much of anything from Selig, whose silence is equal parts defiance and cowardice. The longer he goes without a full-scale outside probe of Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro — anyone and everyone for as long as it takes — the more Selig symbolizes the bloated era as the I-see-nothing lord who allowed syringes to be stuck into buttocks on his watch.
If I were Selig, I’d aggressively want to learn about everything that took place under my blind eyes. Not only is it his right to investigate, it is his responsibility to fans who invest hearts, energy and money into a game advertised as legitimate. Just as his late predecessor, Bart Giamatti, relentlessly probed Pete Rose’s gambling scandal via an outside investigator, Selig owes it to baseball’s past, present and future to do the same. He should want to know exactly who was using and who was directly or indirectly enabling, which would require shakedowns of the Cubs, Giants, St. Louis Cardinals, the managers of those teams (hello, Dusty Baker) and the internal workings of every ballclub, really.
Michiko Kakutani’s review of ‘Game Of Shadows’ can be found in today’s New York Times ; Pulitzer winner Kakutani correctly cites Howard Bryant’s tremendous ‘Juicing The Game’ as a worthy compliment to the reporting of Mark Fairnaru-Wada and Lance Williams.