Just the guys who went from a minor league hitters out of college with little power to premiere power hitters in 6 months after “hitting the weight room” in the offseason. And looked like their muscles got muscles, a physique we never saw in baseball before players started hitting the juice. See what I mean about he Mitchell commission? You are still convinced steroid use was the exception.

“at the very least there’s certainly a reason to at least tell the A’s owner”

I suspect the A’s owner has as pretty good idea of the situation and would prefer no decision to an adverse decision. And until he is ready to make the move, he certainly doesn’t want the commissioner opening up the issue by making public announcements. I doubt you are going to hear the A’s are free to move until they are ready to roll. And you aren’t going to hear an announcement reassuring Oakland that the A’s won”t move either.

The point is not that I know any more than you do. But Selig is not in the business of satisfying the curiosity of fans. The fact that you haven’t heard where things are headed doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

I think there are plenty of reasons why a public announcement of such a decision would be good for the fans in the area, but even if making bi-monthly announcements that a decision will be made in two months IS good public policy, at the very least there’s certainly a reason to at least tell the A’s owner, so he doesn’t go out and spend $36 million he may not have on a Cuban outfielder.

And yeah, I think it’s a real good idea to keep every hitter who got bigger and stronger after his minor league career out of the HOF. At least that takes all the subjectivity out of the process.

Not really. They can point to his body. Or the fact that he hit 6 home runs during his minor league career and 15 his first year in the big leagues at age 23.

“Hey, maybe moving the A’s to San Jose is a terrible idea. But three years to figure that out and STILL not say so? ”

Is there any reason for him to say so publicly?

I’m not sure its the commissioners job to provide red meat for the media and fans. In fact, to the contrary.

I also didn’t use anything to “exonerate” Bagwell. Like others in his circumstance, exoneration would taking proving a negative. That won’t happen.

I’m merely pointing out what is known… that when writers refer to Bagwell’s possible PED use as reasons for not including him on their HOF ballot, they have nothing to point to except leaks that he would be named in the Mitchell report (which turned out to not be the case). Otherwise, he simply played in the same era as a lot of cheaters… just like everyone else that’s starting to show up on the HOF ballot.

You may call the Mitchell Report a successful PR effort. To me, it was a predictably flawed, incompetent exercise, overseen by a similarly flawed and incompetent Commissioner.

The owners dropped the myth that the commissioner was acting independently in the “best interests of baseball” a long time ago. Selig lead the charge for that change. The commissioner now works for the owners. That means he is not the decision maker, he is the chief cat herder. And, as always, the cats are the ones really in charge. Selig is a tool of the owners, but that is working as designed.

It may be moving Oakland to San Jose is in the “best interests of baseball.” But that isn’t clear. What is clear is that the Giants have a large fan and corporate suite base in Silicon Valley. So you could just end up with two financially struggling franchises competing for the same dollar.

There are also some political considerations for such a move right now. There is the little matter of a governor who is the former Mayor of Oakland. He might not be very receptive to the idea of his hometown losing its franchise.

The Mitchell report was a PR effort and it was largely effective. When people talk about the steroid/performance enhancing drug problem in baseball its almost always in the past tense. You complain about the report and yet use it to exonerate Bagwell. It may be Bagwell never used steroids, it may be that he did. The Mitchell report doesn’t really answer that question.