Mike Celizic

Major League Baseball pays Bud Selig $14.5 million a year. For that much money, you’d think he could make a decision.

Is the game’s chief executive going to be in the crowd when Barry Bonds hits his 756th home run and baseball is forced to crown a new home run champion of all time or not?

Simple question. Just two options: yes or no. Pick one and send out a press release. The fans and the game want to know.

Actually, there aren’t even the two options, because not being there for an all-time record is not an option. It’s Selig’s game and the game’s record.

He’s got to be in the house when the BALCO Bomber relegates the venerable and beloved Hank Aaron to second place. To be anywhere else would be a travesty of what it means to be commissioner and an insult to a player who has yet to be caught doing anything against the rules of the game.

Besides, the record is just as much Bud’s as Barry’s. Selig’s the genius who called it a great day when Mark McGwire put his acne-covered shoulders into a pitch and slugged his way past Roger Maris.

Selig is the guy who apparently was unaware of the existence of steroids when Sammy Sosa was hitting 60 a year and Bonds was bashing 73 and the turnstiles were spinning from the onrush of fans eager to see balls leave the park in record numbers.

For more than a decade, Selig thought all that offense was the best thing to happen to the game since pine tar. And if there was a reason for it, it must have been the supercharged baseballs Selig allowed in play and the smaller parks and the tiny strike zone and the great skills of his superbly conditioned athletes.

The baseball world was whispering "drugs" so loud you could hear it even in Selig’s New York offices. And he never heard it, never noticed that modern chemistry might be playing a role, never said "boo" until Congress threatened to usurp his authority and take charge of drug testing.

And then he was outraged. Outraged, I say. He appointed an investigator, former Sen. George Mitchell, delivered a few speeches, and vowed to get to the bottom of what had blown up into a major scandal.

Fine. He’s got his investigation, a new testing policy — thanks to the belated cooperation of the players association — and a mandate to clean things up.

But, guess what? Bonds, who still hasn’t tested positive for steroids, is still going to break that record. And even if he’s linked to drugs six or ten years ago, there’s not a darned thing Selig can do anyway; they weren’t against the rules of the game — the rules of Selig’s game.

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