MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin. Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig told reporters here today that he won't jump to conclusions about Barry Bonds, even though the slugger's use of performance-enhancing drugs has become common knowledge with the publication of excerpts from Game of Shadows, a bookby two San Francisco Chronicle reporters.
"In fairness to Barry and to my own reputation, I have decided to avoid making a decision for as long as I possibly can," Selig said in answer to reporters' questions as he entered his auto dealership here. The hardback edition of the book costs $26, and Selig said he would wait until a cheaper paperback version became available.
Game of Shadows is due to hit stores on March 27th, but excerpts from the book by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams have already appeared in Sports Illustrated. Charles Nichols, a spokesman for MLB, said Selig's subscription to the magazine had lapsed and would not be renewed until the Green Bay Packers won the Super Bowl again. "If the Packers win he'd renew to get one of those cool commemorative footballs, but until then, no way."
Selig is notoriously tight with money, and is often seen stuffing his pockets with condiments at fast food restaurants. "We've had to talk to him about it more than once," said Allen Wingate, manager of a Popeye's Chicken franchise in Milwaukee. "He takes paper towels back to his dealership and puts them in the restrooms."
For his part, Bonds said he wouldn't answer questions about the book and didn't intend to read it. "It took two guys to write that ####," Bond's said bitterly. "One's named 'Lance', the other has two last names, and they're from San Francisco," he added. "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
So in other words Bud is going to take a mulligan until next year, when the paperback comes out. Sounds about right. What reputation does he have to defend? That he has allowed the MLB to suffer blow after blow. When is the final knockout punch coming for Selig?
its kinda like when your car is making a strange noise under the hood....just do like my friend jen does, and turn up the radio to drown it out, or talk more, longer, faster, and be less coherent so you cant hear anything except your own voice.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
