Tomorrow, MLB’s warts will be on display for everyone in the U.S. who has basic cable. CSPAN-3 will be covering the live Congressional hearings with CSPAN-2 running a slimmer – albeit still six hour – version afterwards. In light of all of the bad publicity, one would expect the owners and players to present a positive united front. There is indeed some unity, but I don’t think recent develops cast a particularly positive light on the game. Baseball’s policy, a still-unsigned 27-page document, was released today. Too call it cynical and disingenuous would be an understatement. No mandatory suspensions. No mandatory out-of-season testing. A banned substance list that falls well short of comprehensive and a testing policy that falls short of rigorous.
For those of you who are tuning in, my father will be doing a one-on-one call-in show on CSPAN at 8:30 AM. He’ll then be on Panel 2 during the hearings. And should you think that this proceeding is nothing but grandstanding (and I don’t deny that some of it probably is), I invite you to look at an excellent piece by Keith Olbermann. He rightly points out that baseball has periodically needed a kick in the rear.