Do-nothing commish ruins game

I don't want to hear (that) the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn't care about it ... You bet I'm sensitive to the criticism.

– MLB commissioner Bud Selig

Like Alex Rodriguez and Bill Clinton, Selig took the offensive this week with his own defense.

Selig is the baseball commissioner who slept through baseball's Steroid Era.

Memo to Buddy: Are you sure you want to go here?

No matter what his angle, Selig's self-defense will have holes in it. If he didn't know, why not? If he did know, why was nothing done for so long? And if he tried but failed, then why didn't he have the clout to get it done? Mountain Landis, he's not.

So in the wake of the continuing Steroid saga, which never seems to end — to wit: the Miguel Tejada and Rodriguez cases — Selig is responding to criticism of his ineffectiveness.

Let's review the case against Selig: For four decades nobody made a serious threat to Roger Maris's single-season home run record of 61 set in 1961. Then in one five-year period, from 1997 to 2001, Bonds, Sosa and McGwire broke the record six times, and three other players came close. Until the Steroid Era, every entry on the top 10 list for most homers in a single season occurred between 1920 and 1961. From 1997 to 2001, three players cracked the top 10 a total of seven times.

Selig and baseball did nothing.

Selig also did nothing when they found McGwire's bottle of Andro (a steroid-like drug) in his locker in 1998; and he did nothing when Barry Bonds showed up for spring training in 2000 with 35 pounds of new muscle at the age of 35; and he did nothing when Bonds slugged 258 home runs in five seasons (compared to 259 in his first nine years); and he did nothing when Ken Caminiti admitted in 2002 that he used steroids to win the MVP award in 1996 and said half of all players used steroids; and he did nothing when Caminiti died of a heart attack at the age of 41; and he did nothing when Major League batters hit a record 62 home runs in a single day in 2000; and he did nothing when 10 teams' doctors warned of widespread steroid use in 2000.

Here's what the dopey commissioner said in 2002: "Of course we have concerns. But at this stage we're just sitting back and monitoring."

Sitting back? Monitoring? The Titanic was taking on water and he was smoking a cigar.

Here's what the commissioner said in 2000, when someone raised the issue of steroids amid another home run barrage: "Let's just see how this thing plays out."