Bud Selig: Don't Blame Me for Steroid Era

Bud Selig has something to say about this steroid era he presided over, ladies and gentlemen. And it does not disappoint, especially if you enjoy disliking him:

"I don't want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn't care about it," Selig told Newsday's Wallace Matthews in a telephone interview. "That annoys the you-know-what out of me."

Perfect. Surely you didn’t expect him to stand up and take any sort of ownership or responsibility for having been, you know, in charge of baseball while PEDs overtook clubhouses. See, he didn’t turn a blind eye to the problem. He was simply ignorant to it. There’s a big difference between the two, although both reek equally of incompetence.

In hindsight, would Bud have handled that era any differently? Again, his response is just what you’d expect:

"I'm not sure I would have done anything differently," Selig told Newsday. "A lot of people say we should have done this or that, and I understand that. They ask me, 'How could you not know?' and I guess in the retrospect of history, that's not an unfair question. But we learned and we've done something about it. When I look back at where we were in '98 and where we are today, I'm proud of the progress we've made."

No, seriously, how could you not know? If it’s a fair question, then Selig should answer it. If about 20% of the workers (that number’s on the low end of some estimations) in the company you preside over are engaged in illegal activity, you’d think some red flags might go up. Unless, of course, said activities are helping the company make more money, and grow, in which case ignorance is bliss.

Bud does go on to mention that their efforts to eliminate PEDs from baseball were “fought by the union every step of the way.” That’s a fair point. And certainly the union should shoulder some blame for the era as well. But when did we start hearing Selig make noise about eliminating steroid use? 2004, or so? Only about six years after PEDs exploded upon the scene. And only after outside sources brought the problem to light. But hey, what’s a few years late when we’re talking about the integrity of an entire national pastime. Keep earnin’ that $18 mil, Bud.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.