TimothySexton.com

Bart Giamatti, where are you?  The baseball nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

For all intensive purposes, Major League Baseball hasn’t really had a Commissioner since the untimely death of Bart Giamatti.  His successor, Fay Vincent, was a temporary solution to the problem caused by Giamatti’s death until the baseball owners could hand-pick one of their own.  The result was Bud Selig, perhaps the most impotent sports commissioner in history.

Bart Giamatti made his mark upon baseball history by examining the evidence produced both against and in favor of Pete Rose and summarily banning him from the game.  Even today Pete Rose’s supporters point to their guy’s statistics as evidence that he belongs in the Hall of Fame and as an ambassador for the game of baseball.  That may be true, but it is also true that he broke the rules and perverted the very sprit of the game.  While it is certainly true that there are precious few saints in the Baseball Hall of Fame and more than a few sinners, pursuing the argument that Pete Rose belongs there because nobody is perfect and it all depends upon the numbers is a risky argument.  Pete Rose’s numbers were authentic; there is no evidence he cheated with steroids.  But how do you draw the line between Pete’s peccadilloes and the use of steroids?  Breaking the rules is breaking the rules and when it comes to the Hall of Fame there is only one solid rule that is inviolate: don’t get caught until after you’re already in. 

Bart Giamatti didn’t pussyfoot with Pete Rose and didn’t allow him to set the course of action for his own investigation.  Anyone who doesn’t think that a enormous amount of ballplayers today aren’t using steroids of one kind or another is fooling himself.  The way that both the players and the owners have mapped this thing out so that there is a greater chance that Karl Rove will testify before Congress than there is that even a handful of cheaters will get caught is ludicrous.   It is hard to imagine Bart Giamatti being the tool of the owners that Bud Selig is, or allowing the freaking Players Union to even be let into the room when the rules of engagement for steroid testing is being drafted.  The players have absolutely no right to have any say in how they are tested.  At one point they did, but they gave it up when they sat idly by and said nothing when it was still only a fraction of them who were doing it.  What a strange situation it is when Bud Selig is in collusion with the Players Union to preserve the so-called integrity of baseball.  Selig no more wants players being subject to severe steroid testing than the Players Union; imagine Major League Baseball with a third of its stars banned from the game.

Too bad Bart Giamatti died so young.  It is really difficult to imagine that the man who woudn't give Pete Rose a second chance would have allowed the game of baseball to reach its present sad state.