What is Bud Selig's Role in the PED Era?

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A lot of people have been buzzing about the latest reports of steroids allegations involving 20 players, including Alex Rodriguez and Ryan. In fact, after we broke the story on here last night, my Twitter feed start buzzing with reactions to the news. Today, I'll take a look at what Bud Selig's role in the Steroid Era has been.

The way I see it, there are two ways to go on this debate. You could either take the "Well, he tried to clean up baseball" or the "Well, he didn't do enough to prevent it in the first place." I tend to lean more towards the latter. I think he let it get out of hand before taking serious action. Sure, you could make the case that since the Mitchell Report came out, he's been trying to combat PED use in baseball, and maybe that will help his legacy, but it doesn't change the fact there was very little done to stop PED use before that. It would be fair to question how much knowledge Selig actually had prior to the Mitchell Report, but a pretty clear indicator would be Mark McGwire hitting 70 home runs in 1998, then Barry Bonds hitting 73 home runs in 2001. It was pretty sad to learn about McGwire especially, because as a 7-year-old kid, watching him go at it all season with Sammy Sosa was a really exciting moment for me.

The MLB is preparing to take serious action against this round of players (Braun and A-Roid will both get 100 game suspensions if found guilty), but it's too late for Selig to completely redeem himself. There will always a footnote in the baseball history books as the guy who let this happen under his nose and waited until after the damage was done to take real action. Disagree? Tweet me @ConorJF1016 with your thoughts.

Conor Frederick
Contributing Writer