SPORTSVIEW
Selig faces some important decisions
By TIM DAHLBERG/ The Associated Press

DAHLBERG

Roger Clemens was in Florida, acting as if nothing ever happened and telling reporters to get a life just as his took an ominous turn for the worse. He wanted to play pitch and catch, and apparently the Houston Astros didn't have the guts to tell him to stay home.

Barry Bonds would have loved to be there with him, but apparently Bonds isn't going to be invited to this party. Too bad, because the two could have chatted in the warm sun about the kind of things baseball players talk about these days - bad needles, good lawyers, and prisons with the best cells.

They've spent most of their adult lives getting paid big money to play a child's game, and now they're caught in a game more serious than either seems to comprehend. That's not hard to imagine because, before the feds came hunting, their biggest worries were where to eat after the game and whether the hotel suite had a flat panel TV.

Now, one of the greatest hitters ever faces the prospect of his post-baseball life beginning in a uniform of a different kind. In a bizarre turn of events, one of the greatest pitchers ever may be facing the same thing.

BASEBALL'S FATE IS IN HIS HANDS - Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig (far right) needs to make the decisions necessary to re-claim control of the game from the rumors of steroids and HGH use, writes Associated Press columnist Tim Dahlberg.

Both undone by massive egos they couldn't control.

Clemens' was on display again Wednesday when he arrived as the Astros' camp to pitch batting practice and give some pitching tips to the team's minor leaguers. Not only did he manage to get there on the first day baseball's exhibition season opened, but on the same day that Congress asked the attorney general to see if he should face perjury charges.

Bonds' was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn't his doing. He would like nothing better than to play while his own court case moves forward, but so far his agent is having trouble finding a team willing to take a chance on a moody 43-year-old who doesn't have a record to chase anymore.

By now, you would think some desperate team would have tried to sign Bonds, who did manage to hit 28 home runs last year and got on base half the time he went up to the plate.

Those numbers are surely better than most designated hitters in the American League will put up this season, and imagine what Bonds might do well rested in cozy ballparks where the ball travels a lot better than it did in San Francisco.

Nobody seems to want him, though it probably has more to do with his clubhouse behaviour than his legal problems. If teams were really concerned about performanceenhancing drugs, players like Eric Gagne and Paul Lo Duca wouldn't be making millions of dollars from new teams this season.

Bud Selig could do something about that, but he's been busy lately.

On this day he was in front of a House committee in Washington where one congressman told him he didn't think he deserved to be the commissioner of baseball. If that wasn't bad enough, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency called baseball's drug testing program a joke because it is run in-house.

In Selig's defense, there never would have been a Mitchell Report without him. He ordered it, found someone credible to do it, and accepted its results.

But these are times in baseball where the commissioner has to do more. The steroid and human growth hormone scandal has penetrated the very core of the game so that not only are fans pointing fingers and whispering, but players are, too.

Can anyone's statistics be trusted again?

Here's a suggestion for Selig: Pretend spring training actually starts tomorrow and do something to make fans feel good about their game once again.

Start by telling Clemens he's no longer welcome in any major league camp until he either comes clean or the mountain of evidence against him somehow crumbles. His presence with the Astros is not only a daily reminder of all that's wrong with baseball, but of how stupidly arrogant Clemens must be to even be there.

Next, send out a memo to all 30 clubs telling them they can't try to sign Bonds until after he is acquitted in a trial. Sure, the union will scream, but you're the commissioner of baseball. Wield the big stick.

Follow that with the suspensions you've been threatening since the Mitchell Report came out. If you can't come up with a list, I'll give you 20 names just for starters of who shouldn't be on the opening-day roster.

Finally, listen to people who have been in the doping business a lot longer than you. Farm drug testing out to an independent agency and make players get tested monthly, instead of twice a season.

None if it is terribly difficult; all of it is badly needed.

Restore some credibility to the game, and maybe we won't have to start next season the way we started this one.