News Item: DOPE HEAD FORESEES BASEBALL’S DOOM
Maybe that should be “head doper,” but John Fahey has said such dopey things “dope head” it shall be.
John Fahey is the chief of the World Anti-Doping Agency, the body of steroids zealots who have appointed themselves the all-powerful being of truth and justice in the matter of illegal performance-enhancing substances. No sports leaguer or organization is pure without WADA’s sanction.
Do you remember how when you were younger you saw gangster movies (Edward G. Robinson, George Raft), where the bad guys ran protection rackets, forcing businesses to pay for their protection or face having their stores torched?
That’s the image I have of WADA and its brother United States gang, USADA. Do it our way (and pay us for doing it our way) or face public recriminations. Dr. Gary Wadler comes across as the George Raft character.
An internist and member of the New York University medical school faculty, Wadler is the most widely quoted steroids “expert.” But every time he speaks, he commits a conflict of interest because he is an official with WADA, which is in the business of making money for advising leagues and organizations and overseeing their testing programs.
It was John Fahey, however, who opened his mouth recently and jammed both feet in it. In an interview with the Associated Press this week in Singapore, Fahey criticized baseball’s drug-testing regimen and said it would not fool fans, who would abandon baseball.
“Ultimately, I think the integrity of sport will come into question and in that context they have to think about the future of their game,” Fahey said. “The public doesn’t like to be taken for a ride and they will march accordingly. If you say come to the contest, am I going to watch who has the best chemist? You don’t go to watch that.”
Fahey would do well to have a better grasp of what he’s talking about, but he has an excuse. Born in New Zealand, he is a naturalized Australian citizen and played rugby, not baseball.
What Fahey obviously doesn’t know is that the fans have already spoken. They keep going to games and watching them on television or listening to them on radio. They might not approve of cheating, but they aren’t going to let use of illegal drugs get in the way of watching their favorite players and favorite teams.
Enough steroids time has passed that if fans were going to protest their use by boycotting ballparks they would have done it already. If fans thought players were using human growth hormone and didn’t like it, they would have stopped attending and watching games.
Baseball fans want to see baseball games, steroids be damned. Fahey should know that. By now, he should also know that baseball has no interest in listening to his harangues.
He told the AP that WADA had tried to talk with baseball officials about HGH but said baseball has “effectively ignored us.”
“Baseball is the most recalcitrant” compared with the NFL, NBA and NHL, he said.
“You had the Mitchell inquiry and clear and concise recommendations from it and they effectively did nothing,” Fahey added. But there again he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Baseball has adopted many of the recommendations made by the George Mitchell panel.
Michael Weiner, head of the players’ union, declined to comment on Fahey’s comments. Rob Manfred, chief labor executive in the commissioner’s office, did not return a call.
News Item: ARBITRATOR TO DECIDE RODRIGUEZ FUTURE
Fresh off a decision for the team and against the pitcher in what appears to be a similar episode, baseball’s impartial arbitrator, Shyam Das, will very likely be called on to decide the contractual dispute between the New York Mets and Francisco Rodriguez.
Unless the Mets and the union settle the Rodriguez case, which seems to be unlikely, Das will hold a hearing later this year on the team’s double-barreled action against their closer following an altercation with his common-law wife’s father at Citi Field.
Putting Rodriguez on the disqualified list, the Mets maintain they don’t have to pay the pitcher the remainder of his $11.5 million salary for this year, and they changed his contract from guaranteed to non-guaranteed, meaning they could release him next spring and pay him only 30 or 60 days pay from his $11.5 million salary.
The union is challenging both aspects of the Mets’ action.
The Houston Astros did not pay the rest of Shawn Chacon’s salary in 2008 after he shoved general manager Ed Wade to the clubhouse floor. Das ruled that the Astros could terminate the pitcher’s contract.
Does that mean he could rule in the Mets’ favor with the nonguaranteed contract? Not necessarily.
If the Mets tried to terminate Rodriguez’s contract, the Chacon case could serve as a precedent. But the Mets aren’t terminating it. They are not saying they want to be rid of Rodriguez. They want to keep all of their options open; they want to preserve their rights for next season. If they terminated the contract, Rodriguez would be a free agent.
Will Rodriguez pitch for the Mets again once his surgical thumb is ready? That remains to be seen, but I suspect if owner Fred Wilpon makes the decision, he will not and if Wilpon lets general manager Omar Minaya make the decision he will.
News Item: MANAGER’S POSITION QUESTIONED
Some of the newspaper coverage of the Rodriguez affair was peculiar. For example, The New York Times seemed to find it strange that manager Jerry Manuel supported Rodriguez.
Noting that some players were backing away from Rodriguez, the Times said, “Yet from the outset, Manuel has stood by Rodriguez.”
What else should the manager do? Rodriguez may pitch for Manuel again. What kind of relationship would they have if Manuel wrote him off now? In addition, Manuel’s tacit support for Rodriguez will be noticed by the other players, who will see that their manager will come to their support if they need it.
In the same report, the Times said Manuel “mystified some people” about his possible use of Rodriguez if he were available. It didn’t say who those people were or whether they were baseball officials, Mets officials, reporters, Citi Field security guards or stadium sweepers. Once upon a time, the Times didn’t allow the use of such vague terms. It’s another example of the lowering of standards.