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Bud Selig has written an autobiography. If the excerpts in Sports Illustrated are accurate, baseball’s ninth commissioner was a gloomy Gus during Barry Bonds’ 2007 run-up to his record-breaking 756th home run.
“This wasn’t the Bataan Death March,” Selig writes. “Nobody was going to die or be forced into hard labor, But the summer of 2007 was unpleasant for me, and when I look back, that’s putting it mildly. It was one of the few times in my life I wasn’t excited about going to ballparks, and if you know me that’s all you need to know.”
Gloomy enough for you?
That wasn’t an exclusive club. Between early 2001 and 2006 we were treated to a fistful of milestone Bonds home runs, their run-ups and aftermaths. You knew you were seeing history. And the more history you saw, the more you sensed this was not an authentic rewrite of the record book.
There was no way for certain to tell if performancing-enhancing drugs were in play. Bonds’ demeanor? He was relentlessly miserable. Confirmed by 1,000 sources.
So that was the scene in late July 2007 as Bonds inched toward Henry Aaron’s career home run record of 755. When Bonds clocked Nos. 752 and 753 in a game at Wrigley Field on July 19, five days short of his 43rd birthday, a great many people prepared to attach themselves to a last-place team.
Not all of them willingly. Seriously. Here were the sentiments of the late Peter Magowan who saved the Giants for San Francisco, then resurrected the franchise by signing Bonds to a colossal contract.
“The sooner it’s over,” Magowan said, “the better.”
Meanwhile in a paneled boardroom in Milwaukee, Selig was waiting for any development — a worldwide baseball shortage, a comet striking the earth — that would absolve him of having to participate in what was about to go down.
“While I felt responsibility to be on hand for Bonds’s moment,” Selig writes, “I’ll admit I had a fantasy that I’d be spared when I went to Cooperstown to see (Cal) Ripken and (Tony) Gwynn be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Nobody would have blamed me for being there rather than on the road with Barry. But I received no reprieve, so I trudged to Dodger Stadium and then Petco, the Padres’ beautiful home that had opened only three years earlier.”
Having been there, I can report Selig’s trip to Dodger Stadium wasn’t all trudgery. Seated in a sleek red sedan, he was escorted to top tier of the Dodger Stadium parking lot, squealing tires and everything, by a dark blue SUV with flashing red lights.
Selig told the assembled press: “I’m confident in my decision. I think it was the right thing for me to be here, and I’m here.”
He also was in San Diego when Bonds tied the record of Aaron, Selig’s hero and friend. He was in absentia the following night in San Francisco, when Bonds broke it.
At least he called Bonds afterward.
Back to the book:
“This awkward spectacle was the final exclamation point in an era of unprecedented power hitting throughout baseball. I’d seen it all, studied it, and would continue to study it for years.”
And yet, as Bonds closed in on Aaron, Selig did nothing about it. Nine years passed between when a reporter spied a bottle of andro in the locker of Mark McGwire, and Bonds’ supernatural record-breaking power surge. Selig sat on his hands.
“I know some people will forever link me with Barry Bonds,” Selig writes. “Some will say baseball’s failure to limit the impact of steroids quicker is my failure. They may even call me the steroid commissioner.”
You can book it.
