Is there some sort of terrible commissioner contest going on?

Some days I really get the idea that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig are in some sort of perverse contest to see who can ruin their respective league's the fastest. What's that? You put hockey franchises in Phoenix and Atlanta? I'll end the All Star Game in a tie and introduce interleague play!

This week has been a classic example of this one downmanship.

It started with Bud Selig, or the office of the league commissioner deciding that the World Series games should all start at 8:30... sorry, 8:29 eastern standard time every night, even though both teams are in the eastern time zone. I am sure this was to make the World Series more accessible to the Midwest and West Coast fans. However, it means that young fans of the Tampa Bay Rays and Philadelphia Phillies have to stay up until at least 11:30 at night to watch their home teams play. Any sensible parent would have to send their kids to bed around 10 on a school night. How does a sport, recovering from a major faith-shaking scandal, expect to grow young fans and get them interested in the sport if they can't even watch the championship series in its entirety?

Apparently, Gary Bettman saw this and felt he could do better. (Worse?) After a week of excited speculation that a Western conference hockey team, likely the Nashville Predators, would be bought by Research in Motion co-owner Jim Balsille and moved to Toronto, Gary Bettman announced that it was a baseless rumour that would never happen. Why? He didn't say. One can only assume that he is against the idea of an unsuccessful and unpopular team being moved to a proven hockey hotbed that could easily support a second franchise because he dislikes the idea of people enjoying the National Hockey League.

Not to be outdone, Bud Selig decided that Game 5 of the World Series should be played even though it was raining and there was no sign of abatement. The hometown Phillies were starting ace Cole Hamels, and, if they won, would win the World Series. However, the rain was so bad that halfway through the sixth inning the game was suspended as a 2-2 tie. Hamels was still on the mound at the end of the game, can't possibly be expected to start the day after throwing six innings worth of pitches in the pouring rain and freezing temperatures. Essentially, his start last night has been wasted and has given the Rays another shot at winning the game.

I shudder to think how Bettman will top this disaster...

Ken Griffey Jr.'s fading milestone

Growing up, I wasn't really into hockey, which is odd for a kid from a hockey obsessed town like Toronto. I was disinterested in it because I was (and am) a terrible skater. But baseball? Baseball I loved. After all, I was nine and ten years old when the Jays won their World Series, it was before the strike season, and dammit, I was good at baseball.

My favourite player was, easily, Ken Griffey Jr. He was classy but competitive, and tall and thin just like me. I used to stand in my driveway and practice swinging my bat, trying to emulate his swing. I now realize that I could not have chosen a better role model for my swing. It's picture perfect: full of grace and power, efficiently slicing through the air. Griffey's swing can put the ball anywhere on the field, or, if he chooses, past the outfield fences.

That's why I was saddened to read Tim Brown's article on Griffey and the Silent 600, which highlights something that I had also noticed: although Ken Griffey Jr. is approaching the impressive milestone of 600 career home runs, there is little fanfare or media coverage. Even the hometown Reds fans aren't excited about this milestone.

Of all the home run hitters in the modern era, he, along with Frank Thomas, are some of the few to have escaped without getting caught up in the steroid madness. Griffey's body doesn't fit the stereotypical HGHers mold, and there is no doubt that a lot of his success comes from the sweetness of his swing, not of a syringe.

For me, the defining moment of Griffey's career wasn't on the field, but instead at the end of his tenure with the Mariners. His teammate Alex Rodriguez had signed on with the Texas Rangers for the largest baseball contract of all time, and the New York Yankees were approaching Griffey with a similarly bloated offer. Instead, he chose to go to his hometown Cincinnati Reds for considerably less. Although this did nothing to stem the tide of outrageous contracts in the late 1990s, I still admired Griffey's priorities.

Similarly, Griffey is an iconoclast today. A man who's reached a milestone through all natural means, but gets no attention for it, unlike last years cavalcade of shame while Barry Bonds approached the all-time record.

Ultimately, I think this is going to be the aftermath of the post-strike steroid era. The public's trust has been broken, and the honest, hard working and clean ball players will suffer because they don't get the credit they deserve, while the puffed up home run heroes like Jason Giambi attract all the media coverage for apologies where they do not actually say what they're apologizing for.

But for me, I still have my Reds cap, and my Ken Griffey Jr. unauthorized biography comic book, and I can't wait for him to hit his 600th homerun and truly earn his way into Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, because he was, and is, one of my baseball heroes.

Breaking the back of steroids

For those of you who live in a cave, but, oddly, have an internet connection that allows you to view this blog exclusively, earlier this week surefire Hall of Famer Roger Clemens appeared before a Congressional hearing investigating the Mitchell Report and his claims that he did not, in fact, use Human Growth Hormones or any other banned substances.

I think we can now call him simply "Roger Clemens" and drop the "surefire Hall of Famer" bit.

Mr. Clemens, as the Congressmen who were questioning him called him, has made himself look very very bad. So bad that I think he's done playing baseball and has hurt his chances at entering the Hall of Fame.

His former trainer, Brian McNamee, was the main source of the controversial Mitchell Report's list of steroid users. Of those accused in the Report, most admitted that they had, indeed, used steroids, HGH, or other performance enhancing drugs. Although many relied on the "I only tried it once" line of defense, practically everyone acknowledged that yes, they took drugs.

Andy Pettitte was one such player who owned up (manned up?) and admitted to his steroid use. So did Chuck Knoblauch. Both men have much in common. Both were former teammates of Roger Clemens. Both testified against him in sworn affadavits last Wednesday.

As Tom Verducci said shortly after Wednesday's hearing: "Two months later and even after nearly five hours of testimony Wednesday in front of Congress, the issue of whether or not Roger Clemens used steroids is left in a suspended state of dilemma: it's Clemens' word vs. Brian McNamee's word. Still."

I agree, by and large. But there is growing circumstantial evidence building against Clemens. McNamee was right in over fifty other cases. Two of the men who have admitted to steroid use have also backed up McNamee. This isn't hard evidence, but there's no evidence to support Clemens' claim of innocence.

I'll say this. I do think that Major League Baseball and its comissioner Bud Selig have turned a corner: I think they're now ready to really start laying some heavy lumber on the issue of steroids in baseball, and I think that starting with the 2008 season they'll be able to start re-building the public's trust.