Where was Selig when McGwire Needed Him?

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Bud Selig says he’s thrilled that the St. Louis Cardinals have hired Mark McGwire to be their hitting coach. Nice to have the commissioner on your side. If only Selig had been there when McGwire really needed him four years ago.

It was March 17, 2005 when McGwire famously took the Fifth as the House Government Oversight Committee repeatedly asked him if he used steroids. McGwire’s line “I’m not here to talk about the past,” is one of the iconic moments of baseball’s steroid era, and instantly branded him a cheat and a coward.

Given what we know now, it’s pretty clear that McGwire took the fall for steroid use that was both widespread and well known inside the game—and hardly a secret to even casual observers of the game. Let’s face it, everyone was having too much fun and making too much money to complain. But when it came time to assign blame, only Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens have lost more than McGwire. And given the consensus reaction of the media to Tuesday’s announcement—silence will not be tolerated, an apology is mandatory—McGwire is still paying the price for taking the Fifth.

But given the events of the last few years—the government’s illegal seizure of baseball’s 2003 drug tests and the subsequent leaks, the use of the Mitchell Report to corner Roger Clemens on evidence that was both questionable and outside the statute of limitations—it’s hard to see what else McGwire could have done. McGwire had to know that his refusal to answer the steroid question would be considered an admission of guilt, which begs the question: why didn’t he just cop to it and move on? The answer: because federal agent Jeff Novitzky and the Balco prosecutors would have scooped him up, put him in front of a grand jury, and asked what else he knew.

And then it would really have gotten ugly.

Refusing to answer questions would have put McGwire in contempt of court. Barry Bonds’ trainer Greg Anderson spent 16 months in jail for the same transgression. Answering questions would have transformed McGwire from a coward to a rat. McGwire has spent four years in baseball purgatory for being a cheat and a coward. In the world of sports, nothing is worse than being a rat. So it turns out that McGwire took the lesser of two nasty evils.

None of this means that taking steroids was the right thing to do. But a little perspective—something completely lacking in 2005—is in order.

Let’s start with the House hearing. By March of 2005, baseball was well on its way to dealing with the sensitive and highly charged issue of drug testing in the work place. It had installed mandatory testing with tough penalties for first-time offenders: suspension and public exposure. What other industry goes to those lengths? Does yours? On the day after he delivered his whitewash of a report, George Mitchell was asked if he thought presidents, vice presidents, and judges should be tested for drugs. He demurred, saying that these sort of things need to be taken on a case by case basis. Seems baseball players are more important to the integrity of our nation than its highest officials.

The Senate Commerce Committee had already used baseball as a punching bag for three years before the House jumped into the game in 2005. The weekend before the hearing, Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) and ranking minority member Henry Waxman (D-Ca.) did the Sunday morning talk shows to drum up interest for their televised inquisition. In the green room before the hearing, one congressman after another asked the players for autographs, posed for pictures, and insisted that their day before Congress was little more than a formality. Once the television camera was turned on, these same Congressmen went for the jugulars, asking questions on a subject they barely understood. It was political opportunism in its most crass form.

A little background on this committee is also instructive: This is the same group that decided not to investigate the Valeri Plame leak, the failed FEMA response to Katrina and all the no-bid contracts, the falsified evidence of WMDs in Iraq, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and the suppression of scientific evidence of global warming by the Bush Administration.

It did, however, dive deeply into the Terri Schiavo case.

And steroids in baseball, a high profile platform with huge political upside and virtually no risk. Spare me the argument that they were concerned about the kids. While our elected representatives preened in front of TV cameras railing about steroids in baseball, the real nation’s real drug problem—heroine—was taking off. If you have not been following the heroin epidemic that has gripped teenagers the past three years, just do a quick google search. You will be amazed, and dismayed, by what you will read.

Let’s not spend too much time discussing the self righteous baseball media, which like baseball management and fans everywhere turned a blind eye to players who resembled the Michelin man posting numbers that were far out of line with the history of the game. Steroids made the game sexy, baseball’s answer to Michael Jordan and the slam dunk, and baseball writers were like fans everywhere, dazzled and enjoying the show. When it turned out that game was juiced, many of them were embarrassed and lashed out at the same players they had been immortalizing. A few made a big show of self flagellation, moaning that they should have done a better job while grabbing every TV and radio spot to talk about their failures.

And what of the game’s commissioner? He could not say enough good things about McGwire in ’98 when he saved the sport Selig and the owners kneecapped by canceling the’94 World Series. Then he abandoned him and every other player when Congress decided to score political points as the game worked to solve it drug problem. The Commissioner had a collectively bargained drug program in place. He needed to stand up and say “As commissioner, this is my responsibility. We have a problem, we’re sorry, and we’re going to fix it.”

Instead, he blamed the union, let the players take the fall, used Bonds and Clemens as scapegoats, and paid George Mitchell $20 million to re-write history.

Now Bud’s saying that he is proud of the Cardinals for hiring McGwire. “I have no misgivings about this at all,” Selig says. “Mark McGwire is a very, very fine man and the Cardinals are to be applauded. I give Tony La Russa a lot of credit and [Cardinals chairman] Bill DeWitt a lot of credit for making this happen. I was—and am—very supportive of their decision.”

If I’m McGwire, I’m wondering why it took the commissioner four years to come to his defense.