Selig’s move against steroids symbolic one

For all the huffing and puffing he did Thursday, the only house Bud Selig will blow down in the end is his own.

He can’t really get Barry Bonds, the prime suspect in the book that finally convinced the commissioner there was a problem. He won’t be able to stop the Giants slugger from hitting home runs once the season starts, and there’s no guarantee he can suspend him.

He can’t wipe out Bonds’ records or take back his MVP awards, and he can’t even make Bonds talk to his new investigative panel, since the ballplayer is every bit as lawyered up as baseball.

So what’s the point?

“Integrity,” Selig said.

“Integrity,” echoed former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who is heading the investigation.

Now that’s rich.

Baseball finally decides to investigate its performance-enhancing past, and the guy leading it just happens to be a director of the Boston Red Sox – not to mention chairman of The Walt Disney Co., whose ESPN subsidiary is MLB’s national broadcast partner and just cut a deal with Bonds for a weekly TV show.

Imagine how tough Mitchell will be grilling Selig or the owners who fiddled with profits while baseball burned. The commissioner figures it couldn’t be nearly as damaging as the testimony he and a handful of employees were compelled to give before a congressional hearing last March.

That’s when Mark McGwire fidgeted, Sammy Sosa spoke Spanglish, Rafael Palmeiro wagged a finger in lawmakers’ faces and Jose Canseco wouldn’t shut up.

“What I’m hearing,” the former MVP and best-selling author said at the time, “is that I’m the only person in the major leagues who used steroids.”

Far from it – and this is where things could get interesting.

Putting Mitchell in charge was a stroke of genius in one respect: His years as an insider and his work heading up fact-finding missions as far afield as Northern Ireland and the Middle East might keep his former colleagues in Congress off baseball’s back for a while.

But it won’t impress Bonds or BALCO buddies Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield. They’re already in way too deep.

Nor will Mitchell’s reputation for fair-mindedness hold any sway with McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro and all the other supersized hitters and pitchers who figured they got out just in time. They made their peace with cheating long ago. Unlike MLB, Congress has both subpoena power and the Justice Department within reach, and as McGwire so memorably said repeatedly back then, “I’m not going to talk about the past.”

Baseball didn’t even have a real drug policy until September 2002, and its agreement with the union makes punishing players for prior transgressions almost impossible. That’s why Selig wanted the probe limited to events since September 2002, though he added, “Should Senator Mitchell uncover material suggesting the scope should be broader, he has my permission to follow the evidence wherever it may lead.”

So here’s a good starting point:

Just before those congressional hearings, San Diego Padres general manager Kevin Towers acknowledged looking the other way when clear evidence of steroid use by one of his players, Ken Caminiti, was right before his eyes. Caminiti, a former MVP and the first player to admit juicing, died the previous October of a drug overdose at age 41.

In an interview, Towers discussed his guilt about doing nothing to stop the abuse. He hedged on some things and threw qualifiers, but his words were a clear indictment of baseball insiders’ complicity when ballplayers came back from the devastating 1994 strike all muscled up and dying to please:

“We all realized that there were things going on within the game that were affecting the integrity of the game. I think we all knew it, but we didn’t say anything about it.”

At another point, he added, “I hate to be the one voice for the other 29 GMs, but I’d have to imagine that all of them, at one point or other, had reason to think that a player on their ballclub was probably using … “

Within days, Selig called Towers for a clarification and got one. The Padres GM, an MLB spokesman said, “assured us that he didn’t know. He said he suspected.”

Now it’s up to Mitchell to separate facts from rumors. Fans have believed all along players of this era were juiced. While it’s anybody’s guess how many names the panel will hand over, there’s every reason to think Mitchell will deliver a credible number on how many.

It will embarrass baseball for eternity, but that’s what the suits in charge and the counterfeiters in uniforms deserve. We need context to decide how honestly to rank any achievement. Blacks and Latins were excluded from baseball when Babe Ruth set the home run mark that Bonds is ingloriously about to blow by, and rumors of widespread use of amphetamines were around when Hank Aaron set his.

It’s long overdue, but baseball is finally going to provide some context. A lot of reputations and history will be tainted in the bargain, but at least there’s this consolation.

Bonds’ overreaching ambition to be recognized as the best player won’t be realized, precisely because of the era he played in.