Newsday’s Wallace Matthews will not be out-crazied by anyone. After positing -- against all evidence, really -- that Bud Selig will be remembered as a worthless, failed, commissioner, he suggests one way for the Budster to rehabilitate his legacy:
The way he can do it is simple. All Bud Lite has to do is declare that - under the powers granted the commissioner to act in the best interests of the game - baseball will once again recognize Roger Maris as the all-time single-season home-run leader and Hank Arron [sic] as baseball’s career home-run king.
End of story, cue the crescendo, ring down the curtain on a transcendent commissionership.
Matthews says such a move would take “courage” and “integrity.” If by courage and integrity he means “stupidity” and “ignorance,” sure, I’m totally with him. And that stupidity goes beyond Wallace’s seeming inability to spell Hank Aaron’s name.
Setting aside all of the chaos such a move would foment, when does Wallace propose that baseball start recognizing records again? Now? Ten years from now? Tell us, Wallace, when did the “steroid era” begin and end? Also, given that one of the most high-profile steroids cheats of the era was a pitcher, what does Matthews propose to do about those records?
And while we’re asking questions, does Matthews even think that steroids are a problem apart form how they impact the big records? Because as I sit here right now, I can’t recall him ever commenting on what steroids mean for, say, the borderline minor leaguer or the desperate veteran just trying to hang on. With Matthews, steroids only matter for one reason: records, records, records. Though Matthews probably counts that as three reasons (using his fingers for the counting).
Here’s some advice, kids: whenever someone is peddling simplistic solutions to difficult problems, they’re almost always 100% full of it. Steroids in baseball and how they impact the big records is a complicated issue. Matthews’ solution is so brainless, it gives the concept of simplicity a bad name. You do the math.