Swinging in silence

PHILADELPHIA – The baseball season is drawing to a close here with a two-lane race to the finish: the Phillies chasing a wild-card playoff berth in one lane and young Ryan Howard chasing the once-mythic 60-home-run barrier in the other.

What could be an amazing September, however, is muted locally by a well-placed distrust in the Phillies’ ability to close the deal, and nationally by the baseball consumer’s also hard-earned skepticism concerning the accomplishments of home-run hitters.

It isn’t Howard’s fault that upper-deck homers and tumbling records aren’t what they used to be. But this is the workplace in which he chose employment, an industry forever tainted by the bumbling incompetence of its top administrators.

There is something touching about the innocence of those who hope that, should Howard crest the Roger Maris total of 61 home runs, Major League Baseball will step forward and declare the Phillies first baseman holder of the “clean” record for homers in a season.

You would have a shorter wait for commissioner Bud Selig to give away World Series tickets and throw in a free hat for everyone as a bonus.

Ask Selig if Howard is untainted by the shadow of performance-enhancing drugs and if his accomplishments are legitimate in the eyes of the game and he would have to answer: Yes, he is just as clean as Barry Bonds in the eyes of the game.

As Howard entered the weekend with 56 home runs this season, Bonds did so with 732 career homers. Each one that Bonds hits out of the park counts the same in baseball’s eternal record book as those hit by Howard. No asterisks, no parentheses, no problem.

There would have to be a lot of weed-cutting before Howard’s hitting 62 home runs this season meant anything at all, and baseball was a particularly lax gardener between 1998 and 2001, when Maris’ record was “eclipsed” six times – once by Bonds, twice by Mark McGwire, and three times by Sammy Sosa.

If there is a purgatory to which Selig and his feckless compatriots should be confined for their sins of omission, it is the water-torture chamber in which they must watch Bonds creep ever closer to the 755-home-run career mark of Henry Aaron.

At one time, it looked as if Bonds’ arthritic knees would not allow it and Selig would be able to escape the embarrassment he so richly deserves. Now, however, Bonds is hitting home runs again – seven in 13 games entering the weekend – and it seems probable he will set the record sometime next season.

Selig turns his palms upward, of course. What could he have done? The nasty players’ union wouldn’t have agreed to testing and, anyway, it never occurred to him that players were juicing.

Nonsense. He could have invoked the best interests of the game, in the tradition of those commissioners who had a little more sand in their shorts, and let the players take baseball to court for the right to use steroids. Go ahead. Try it.

But baseball was too giddy about the excitement generated by the bogus records to do anything. The executives counted the money and shoved the drug issue to the side, like parking tickets stuffed into the glove compartment.

Now the bills are due. Now baseball’s records mean nothing and a young player like Howard can come along, surging toward 60 home runs in a season, and the nation barely offers a shrug.

That is the end product of baseball’s snooze at the switch, and it continues. For cosmetic effect, Selig appointed a committee headed by former Sen. George Mitchell to investigate the issue, but the committee has no subpoena power and will uncover nothing. Meanwhile, the nap goes on.

None of the four major sports tests for human growth hormone, the current muscle builder of choice, and even the tolerances for old-fashioned anabolic steroids are set so high that clever cheaters can avoid detection. It still goes on, probably in the NFL more than anywhere else, but not solely.

So, enjoy what Howard accomplishes this season. It has been fun by any standard. With the Phillies, you take your fun where you find it.

Don’t expect the game to be stopped if he hits No. 62, however. Don’t expect the commissioner to meet him at home plate and shake his hand. Don’t expect any of those things that would have been his due if baseball hadn’t swung and missed on the issue of performance-enhancing drugs.

Is Howard clean?

Yep, as clean as Bonds.

Just ask Selig.