Dear Bud,
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by user Mycue23
Bud,
I just wanted to drop you a couple of lines. I noticed that you've been doing your darnedest to try and find a scapegoat for baseball's steroid issues. Your latest choice is apparently Jason Giambi. While it's somewhat commendable that you've started a commission to try and get to the bottom of the problem, it's pretty clear that you aren't going to get anywhere. So as a fan of the game and as someone who wants to help you out, I'm going to offer you a solution. I'm going to tell you what the findings of the Mitchell Commission are going to be. For free. How about that. If you're in a giving mood, you can send me the $2 million you were going to spend on the commission next month. Alright are you ready, here goes.
Steroid use was widespread and rampant during the 90's and early 00's.
That's it. Wasn't that easy. I'll give the address to send my check to. Now, here's the important part. I'm going to tell you how to fix this entire mess. The bottom line is that no matter how many individuals you identify (and I don't think you are going to identify any that we don't already know about), it's not going to address the central issue. Baseball players were cheating and everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) knew it. I knew it, you knew it and the American people knew it. Continuing some witch hunt isn't going to make that go away. Everyone needs to move on. So here's what you do: take out a full page ad in the NY Times and just apologize and then move on. You can't erase the fact that you were the commissioner during the "steroids era". That's just your lot. So why not try and focus on something more positive. Here's what you need to say:
- To our fans, Steroid abuse was widespread in baseball for a period of about 10 years. While we heard the whispers of this abuse, we (meaning management and the commissioners office) chose not to investigate this matter any further. The fact that the players union refused to allow us to put steroids on the banned substances list also played a big part in that decision. It is clear now that mistakes were made over that time, by the players, by the coaches, by the union, by the owners and by my own office. We apologize to the fans of baseball for our part in allowing the steroid abuse to take place. We could have done more to make sure that the integrity of the game was preserved.
- We have now taken steps to ensure that this does not happen in the future. We have the toughest steroid penalties in North American sports and our testing program is among the most thorough in sports. There is still no reliable test for Human Growth Hormone (HGH), but I assure that we are working towards eliminating all performance enhancing drugs from our sport. We appreciate your patience and continued support. Baseball is still the greatest game ever invented and we hope that the focus of attention can return to what's going on the field as opposed to the court room. Thank you once again for being such great fans of this game.
That's about it, Bud. Just say you're sorry and we can all move on. Hopefully that helps.
Your Pal,
Michael
