Bud Selig, Vince McMahon Comparison

Dan Wetzel is comparing MLB and Bud Selig to WWE and Vince McMahon in his latest article for Yahoo! Sports. Intriguing to say the least, my comments will follow the cut-and-paste:

“In the early ’90s, the federal government came into pro wrestling and tried to put Vince McMahon in prison for steroid use of wrestlers,” Jesse Ventura, former Minnesota governor and pro wrestler told the online news program, Your Turn.

“My question is: They’ve now determined 104 baseball players failed their steroid test in 2003 – 104! They indicted Vince McMahon, why aren’t they indicting Bud Selig?”

Bud Selig, Vince McMahon, MLB, WWE, all in the same quote. Ah, what a legacy. Just like wrestling, the last 15 years of baseball saw champions crowned, games won and records broken for reasons other than fair athletic competition.

Baseball hasn’t been an actual sport in years. The guy in charge of what will go down as the game’s worst era since systematic racial discrimination is so conceited he’s trying to claim "don’t blame me, I just run the place".

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Ventura makes a good point about the feds going after Bud Selig the way they did Vince. Congress breathing down the neck of baseball has always made me think they have better things to do, but if there's a precedent with McMahon and the WWE then by all means follow suit.

Bud Selig is not a likeable guy and does little to help that reputation. His recent comments about taking records away and thinking about punishing offenses from years ago is laughable. You can't make Hank Aaron homerun king again. You can't take away Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire's homerun race. You can't erase the Black Sox scandal. You can't go back to the segregated era and whipe all the records clean because whites didn't play against blacks, and vice versa.

But Bud Selig should only share some of the blame.

Baseball has had 9 designated commissioners over the span of 89 years. From Ford Frick to Bowie Kuhn and Peter Ueberroth, all were part of decades dealing with changes in performance enhancing drugs and all had their chance to institute tougher policies. If any had paid more attention to the Olympic games, we probably wouldn't be at this point.

1960: Olympic cyclist Knud Jensen died after a bicycling accident. Autopsy revealed he was under the influence of amphetamines.
1967: The International Olympic Committee begins to delve deeper into researching and banning performance enhancing drugs.
1988: Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson is stripped of the gold medal after testing positive for stanozolol, an anabolic steroid.
1999: The IOC creates the World Anti-Doping Agency to further battle doping in world sports and improve testing.

With decades of doping happening in world sports, how is it that baseball paid no attention. Whether or not owners or commissioners witnessed juicing first hand is not relevant. They knew it was going on worldwide so what would make you think it wasn't happening in your own league. Bud Selig, former commissioners, owners, and the cheating players who took the drugs are all to blame equally.

None of what's transpired should be erased from the history books. Barry Bonds has the home run record. Asterisk implied.