The Candor of Brandon Dubinsky

Following yet another listless performance last night in Buffalo, the New York Rangers’ young Alaskan center, Brandon Dubinsky, managed to articulate the root causes behind his club’s recent struggles that now find the Blueshirts clinging to the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

Following last night’s 4-2 loss to the Sabres, Dubinsky spoke to the New York Post’s Larry Brooks:

This was not even close to a 60-minute effort; hell no. We played 30 hard minutes, the first 10 and the last 20, and there isn’t any excuse for it.

We’ve got to be more accountable. We have to be more accountable to each other. It starts with each individual. I’m not excusing myself. There’s a responsibility we all have to ourselves and the organization.

There’s a reason each one of us is here. There’s a role each one of us has to fill. Whatever that role is, each player has to be his very best at it. We have to be tougher on each other; we have to make sure we hold each other accountable for getting the job done.

You know, we have a great group of guys, but maybe because we’re all such good friends, we don’t get on each other enough. Maybe we’re too willing to just go along with it and when that happens, it becomes contagious.

Your humble diarist can think of one good way to make the Rangers a little less comfortable in the clubhouse, and he’s in Hartford playing with the A.H.L.’s Wolf Pack.

Indeed, general manager Glen Sather’s decisions to cast away Sean Avery, Jaromir Jagr and Brendan Shanahan seem to have deprived the Rangers of the edge it takes to win in the N.H.L. Putting the club in the hands of Chris Drury, Scott Gomez and Markus Naslund has been an abject failure, a fact that has become clearer as the games have become more important down the stretch. When the going gets tough, the meek cower in the corner.

Bringing back Avery prior to the March 4 deadline may be too little, too late to help the Rangers stay in the playoff picture. Currently the occupants of the eighth and final spot in the Eastern Conference (and sliding fast), the Blueshirts hold a slim, three-point lead over ninth-place Carolina, with tenth-place Pittsburgh only a point behind the ‘Canes.

Avery was dismissed by the Dallas Stars—who still retain his rights—in December after only 23 games following his crude and misogynistic comments directed towards Calgary defenseman Dion Phaneuf and Avery’s ex-girlfriend, the actress Elisha Cuthbert. In order to join the Rangers, all teams with a higher waiver priority would have to pass on him. The Rangers, however, are reported to be the only team interested in claiming their erstwhile instigator.

Even if Avery’s presence isn’t enough to lift the team to the playoffs this season, it should signal an important change on Seventh Avenue: The clubhouse needs a shake-up. It shouldn’t just bother the Rangers’ players that their team is not winning. It should bother them that their teammates are not performing.

Bud Selig's Short Memory

Somehow, through one embarrassing episode after another—José Canseco, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodríguez, etc.—Bud Selig continues to defend Major League Baseball's response to rampant steroid use during his tenure. Somehow, he continues to be as delusional and out of touch as the cheating athletes he protected.

On the same day Rodríguez tried to explain away his steroid use as a case of curiosity and naïveté, Selig in an interview with Newsday’s Wally Matthews vehemently disputed that he was in any way complicit in the proliferation of steroids in his sport during the past 15 years.

“I don’t want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn’t care about it,” Selig told Matthews. “That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I’m sensitive to the criticism. The reason I’m so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we’ve come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.”

According to Matthews, “Selig pointed to the reduction in the number of positive steroid tests among major- and minor-league players during the past three years, as well as the institution of amphetamine testing as evidence that baseball's 2005 drug policy is working.”

But the premier ballplayers listed above—and the others busted in former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s (D-Maine) 2007 report and elsewhere—were using performance-enhancing drugs well before 2005. Selig claims that it was just too difficult to negotiate for any kind of drug-testing policy prior to 2002 as a result of the players’ association’s obstinacy.

“Starting in 1995, I tried to institute a steroid policy,” Selig said. “Needless to say, it was met with strong resistance. We were fought by the union every step of the way.”

Selig says that, following the prolonged strike that canceled the 1994 World Series, he wanted to do everything possible to avoid another work stoppage. But that’s an awfully convenient excuse when he and his fellow owners spent the mid-to-late 1990s raking in money hand-over-fist while the likes of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa used chemicals to help them launch home run after home run and shatter the kinds of long-standing records that mean so much to the game.

The union, obviously, deserves its fair share of the blame, too. And if allegations that the union’s No. 2, Gene Orza, was tipping off players before their drug tests are true, the M.L.B.P.A. will have so blatantly crossed a clear moral line that the owners would be more than justified in demanding new leadership at the union before any negotiations regarding a new collective-bargaining agreement.

But the union is supposed to look out for the players’ financial welfare; Selig is supposed to be the game’s chief protector. As rumors of drug use began to swirl in the late 90s, Selig claims he consulted with baseball men he knew and trusted, such as Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin (then a coach with the Milwaukee Brewers), Braves president John Schuerholz and Yankees general manager Brian Cashman to gauge the extent of the problem.

“They all told me none of them ever saw it in the clubhouses and that their players never spoke about it,” Selig said. “[Padres C.E.O.] Sandy Alderson, as good a baseball man as you’ll find, was convinced it was the bat. Others were convinced it was the ball. So a lot of people didn’t know.”

It’s difficult to believe that steroid use could be as rampant as we now know it was, and Selig knew nothing about it. More likely, rather than make other concessions regarding salaries or risk another work stoppage, the owners chose willful blindness over their responsibilities to the game.

This isn’t a “what about the kids?” argument. Your humble diarist will save that for those who have a right to their moral indignation. This is about The Steroid Era, its players, its teams and its records. This is about Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens possibly going to jail for lying to a federal grand jury and a House committee, respectively. It is about Miguel Tejada pleading guilty to lying to congressional investigators. It is about each domino falling until an entire decade of a game so steeped in history and its records is nothing but a ten-year black mark.

Both the owners and players, under great public pressure, have done a commendable job in implementing as tough a testing regime as there is in professional sports over the past four years. But just because only eight major leaguers have tested positive for steroids since 2005 doesn’t mean either side gets a pass for the ten years that preceded that period. We’re talking about an entire era forever tainted with the stain of performance-enhancing drugs because Selig and the owners were either unwilling or unable to take a stand. It represents a complete and total failure of leadership over a ten-year period that will be remembered as long as the national pastime survives.

It was unadulterated greed on the part of the players and their union—who fought any effort to regulate drug use—that led to this. But it was also the greed of Selig and the owners he represents, who refused to draw a line in the sand in the face of all the ill-gotten profits that streamed in with the same frequency that baseballs artificially jumped out of stadiums across the game.

Selig can point to the good work he has done over the past four years to rid the game of steroids. But that doesn’t erase what happened before, particularly as we learn more and more about it with each passing day. Those stories and that era will be his true legacy.

A-Rod’s Non-Admission Admission

“You know, one thing I’m learning as I get older, and hopefully a little wiser, is that honesty, the truth will set you free.” – Alex Rodríguez, Feb. 9, 2009.

Alex Rodríguez is guilty of being stupid and naïve, he told ESPN’s Peter Gammons today.

He says he doesn’t know what, exactly, he put in his body that triggered a positive test for testosterone and the steroid Primobolan. He says he doesn’t know who gave it to him. He says he didn’t even know he failed a steroid test until Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts—more on her below—told him about it on Thursday.

Rodríguez said he discontinued his steroid use after suffering a severe neck injury in Spring Training in 2003, but he reportedly failed the test during the 2003 season. It was after that season that Major League Baseball began drug testing players with disciplinary ramifications.

At least Rodríguez copped to it, which is more than one can say about Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. He could have denied the report, or he could have said that whatever triggered the positive test he took unwittingly. He took responsibility. Just not for everything.

He says he knew what he was taking was illegal—though he wouldn’t use that word, citing the “culture” in baseball at the time—but he doesn’t know what it was. That’s pretty difficult to believe.

But last offseason, Rodríguez sat down with Katie Couric on “60 Minutes.” Couric asked him a direct question: Had he ever used steroids, human-growth hormone or any other performance-enhancing drug? Rodríguez answered unequivocally: “No.”

Gammons asked him today: “You were asked if you ever used steroids, human growth hormones or other performance-enhancing substances. You said no, flat-out no. In your mind, that wasn’t a lie?”

Rodríguez’s answer revealed just how detached from reality he remains: “At the time, Peter, I wasn’t even being truthful with myself. How am I going to be truthful with Katie or CBS? Today, I’m here to tell the truth, and I feel good about that. I think my fans deserve that. I’m ready to put everything behind me and go play baseball. You know, we have a great team this year. I couldn’t be more excited about the guys that we've brought in, Mark Teixeira, A. J. Burnett and CC Sabathia. It’s an important time in my life to turn the page and focus on what’s next.”

He also, bizarrely, accused Roberts of harassing him and his family, a charge Roberts, in a statement, called “absurd.” Rodríguez said, “I mean, what makes me upset is that Sports Illustrated pays this lady, Selena Roberts, to stalk me. This lady has been thrown out of my apartment in New York City. This lady has five days ago just been thrown out of the University of Miami police for trespassing. And four days ago she tried to break into my house where my girls are up there sleeping, and got cited by the Miami Beach police. I have the paper here. This lady is coming out with all these allegations, all these lies because she's writing an article for Sports Illustrated and she's coming out with a book in May.”

SI and Roberts responded quickly. Roberts, in a statement, said, “The allegations made by Alex Rodríguez are absurd. I’ve never set foot in the lobby of Alex’s New York apartment building, never spoken to the University of Miami police, and never set foot on his home property or been cited by the Miami Police for doing so.”

Forgive your humble diarist if he believes a respected former New York Times sports columnist over Rodríguez, who has every reason to lie, and everything to hide. After all, he has been hiding and lying about his steroid use from the public for at least eight years.

To be sure, Rodríguez’s admission today is a start. It’s better than most of the more narcissistic players have done. But, beyond the surface, a lot of what Rodríguez said today rings hollow.