Baseball we have a problem, no it is
not in Houston but at 245 Park Avenue
New York at the Office of the Comissioner
and this could get uglier before it gets better.

By Amaury Pi-GonzálezWhen Commissioner Bud Selig visited
San Francisco recently to announce that
the San Francisco Giants and the City of
San Francisco will host the 2007 All-Star
Game, most of the reporters in attendance
didn’t wanted to talk about the All-Star
Game but about the Steroids scandal.

José Canseco’s book came out, flying out
of the shell as soon as It was released and
right after his ’60 Minutes’interview with
Mike Wallace. So we have a difference of
opinion here, what else is new ? It seems
this country is divided 50-50 again !
Or are we ? Some people say: Who is
José Canseco ? Some other say, way to
go José, say it is so !

It doesn’t matter what José Canseco’s
book says and what people say about
Canseco, what matters here is that
baseball has a real problem.
Mike Greenwell (who finished second
to Canseco for the MVP in 1988) wants
MLB to take the award from José and
give it to him, Greenwell. Some people
are saying that the Giants trip to the
World Series in 2002 was because of
the steroids used by MVP Barry Bonds,
others go further than that and say that
the Giants should be awarded the 1989
World Series and not the Oakland A’S
who were under the influence of steroids.

What most people with 1/2 brain should
agree is that the Office of the Commissioner
and the owners have a lot of the blame
to share here. It seems that MLB makes
a decision always after the facts not
before. Is like installing the Stop sign
in an intersection after 5 people loose
their lives, not before.

Sandy Alderson said that he never
asked José Canseco about steroids
when José was with the Athletics.
Tony LaRussa is leading the defense
of McGwire saying finally that he knew
what Canseco was doing. Everybody is
spinning and positioning here like for
a big court battle, trying to win the
Public opinion sweeptstakes.

When Canseco used the steroids he
alleges he used and injected others
with, those were not ilegal by Major
League Baseball, but common sense
tells me that people in baseball, many
onwers, were happy to see players
bulking-up and hitting the ball 500
feet, the fans love the homerun and
park were getting filled to capacity and
everybody was making money and
….looking the other way.

We saw Canseco,McGwire,Sosa,Bonds,
Frank Thomas and others when they
arrived as rookies and then look at them
today. Wow! they’re different people,
they have another body. Many of them
worked very hard and many also used
“help”to build those amazing muscles,
this is obvious.

In 1998 just 4 years after the game went
through that strike that killed the Postseason
baseball needed may I say it “a shot in the
arm”and they got it with the Sosa vs Big Mac
homerun race from day to day that was
a topic at the office, at the factory at the
newsrooms and newspapers all over the
world kept a score of the race for the
record on PAGE One.

I remember interviewing Sammy Sosa in
Spring Training in 1999 and I asked him
in Spanish point blank about steroids
and “other substances”. He told me
and I quote: “lo único que yo tomo son
las pastillitas esas de los Flinstones”
(“the only think I take are those vitamins
pills called Flinstones”) This was an interview
I did for Fox Sports TV Internacional
out of Los Angeles and while Sosa
was in Spring Training with the Cubs.

Major League Baseball was extremely
proud and happy of the 1998 season as
they should be. The McGwire-Sosa daily
homerun race captioned the imagination
of this country and had lots of people
talking baseball. Lots of people that
usually do not talked baseball, that
was a healthy thing for the sport.

Today seven years after that great 1998
homerun race, people are talking again
about baseball, most of the same people
that talked during that amazing year
but talking about roids.

What we have here today is just a lot
of hypocresy on all sides, players, owners,
baseball rulers. Like the famous line at
Rick’s Americain Café in the famous
movie Casablanca: “what, gambling
ar Rick’s Café ?”

I have a feeling the José Canseco book
was only the first chapter of this
steroids soap opera, one that could
be as long as those on Telemundo
or Univisión.

Thank’s God Spring Training just
started and I will be heading there
soon, like every year, to soak up
the sun and hear that crack of the
bat and to talk baseball and only
baseball.

I will be in Arizona from March 8 until
March 23.

Adios muchachos !
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