Welcome to the Minors

Let the witchhunt begin.

Bud Selig, in all his senile wisdom, has opened an official investigation into the use of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs in baseball. After turning a blind eye for over a decade to major leaguers blowing up like they had allergic reactions to shellfish, Selig is trying to right his wrongs by launching a league-wide search for dopers.

I've never been a fan of Selig and the programs he's brought to baseball, there's no doubt about that. Interleague play is an abomination in my opinion, and thought it helped the Sox win their World Series in 2004, the Wild Card makes MLB just a little too much like NFL.

But I gotta say, I'm on the fence about this investigation. Depending on how this plays out over the season, I could go either way.

First off, I highly doubt this formal investigation will reveal much more than the usual hearsay and baseless accusations that we've been faced with since Steroids became a household name in the majors. Unless they plan to use different methods of testing besides urine, which has shown to be insufficient against today's designer drugs, and develop NEW methods that can detect the ever-changing cocktails of performance enhancers, they ain't gonna find shit.

They've also opened up the floor to EVERYONE who has information about players that have used. Not reliable sources, not trainers, not owners, EVERYONE. By the time their committee weeds through the hundreds of thousands of responses they're going to get, ranging from ex-mistresses to some slackjawed local that thought he saw a syringe in someone's trash can, its gonna be the year 2025. People are going to come out of the woodwork to finger these big leaguers they resent for being millionaires.

But what I'm afraid of mostly is this investigation will out so many big-name stars, the league will lose its big talent, its main draw. People love the longball, and that just may be going the way of the Dodo as more people get fingered and busted.

I'm afraid baseball may fall into a serious doldrum of fans, attendance dropping league-wide as more fans get disgusted as more members of their favorite team are booted out of the league for doping. Hell, I know how upset I'd be if I heard Manny or Big Papi were artificial.

With such a potential drop-off in fanbase, who's to say we don't get another strike year? Owners can't pay salaries if fans don't come to the stadiums. Are we on the verge of another NHL fiasco, with an entire season on the chopping block?

And who's going to bring their kids to games to watch a bunch of cheaters earn millions? With no heroes to adore, there's no kids to form the next generation of fans. With no fans, the game is in serious jeopardy, for possibly many years to come.

But there could be a good side to all this. I've always looked for the silver lining in things, and I'm not about to stop now, especially when it comes to my favorite sport.

Maybe a sudden purge in these all-star big guns will be good for the game. With these monster mashers out of the picture, these artificially-enhanced players out of the game, an influx of real talent is inevitable. We'll get to see those college kids and minor leaguers who have genuine talent, but never made it before because dopers already had their spot in the bigs.

Sure, team offense may no longer rest on the backs of a 40-dinger-a-year player, and come moreso from opponent errors and small-ball tactics, but that's what baseball started out as. That's more to the true nature of the game. Outsmart and outplay the other team, not simply outcrushtheball them.

I may be the only guy in the stands when the stars are gone. I may be the only guy in the stadium who still plunked down his hard-earned cash for a jersey with a name no one recognizes on the back. But I'll still be fan.

Maybe this latest fiasco by Selig will be exactly what everyone's expecting it to be: a disaster, a smokescreen, a sham of an investigation. Too little too late from the man who did nothing to discourage the use of illegal substances as long as the homers were flying and the fans were cheering.

But maybe this is just what baseball needs. Maybe this will finally even the playing field, giving the small teams and players alike a fighting chance to show us what they've got.

Maybe. Maybe.