For the three or four people not suffering from closed-head injuries who
have yet to conclude that the Major League Baseball Player's Association
is 100% out-to-lunch on the issue of steroids, we have this jaw-dropping
news item from the Associated Press: Union head Donald Fehr has announced
that the Association is investigating why no team has signed free agent
Barry Bonds to a 2008 contract. You know, it might be a conspiracy
among the teams. Why else would any team not rush to hire, at a salary of
multiple millions of dollars, a player who would be, at 43, the oldest non-pitcher
in the sport? Why would any team be dissuaded by the fact that Bonds has
chronically bad knees that prevent him from playing the field and would
require him to be a designated hitter in the tougher American League, and
likely playing only three-quarters of the games if he remained
healthy? Or the fact that he is a surly and self-obsessed presence in the
clubhouse, who chronically and defiantly ignores team rules designed for
lesser players? Surely the reason he isn't signed has nothing to do with
the media circus that follows Bonds' every move and statement, making minor
matters like his team winning games an afterthought!
Then there's the little matter of Barry Bonds' well-documented use of
illegal and banned performance-enhancing substances to help destroy the
legitimacy and integrity of baseball's records, fuel an epidemic of similar
use by other players, and threaten the game's popularity and reputation.
And the fact that he's under indictment for multiple counts of lying to
a grand jury, after years of routinely lying to the public and the press.
When he wasn't trying to deflect criticism by crying racism, that is.
Yeah, Donald Fehr is right. This looks suspicious; it might even be collusion.
There is no reason in the world why a team wouldn't want to hire an over-age,
slow, injury-prone, mean-tempered, self-centered, unapologetic felon,
liar and cheater for seven or eight million dollars.
Donald Fehr is, it seems, an idiot.
And an Ethics Dunce.
Donald Fehr