Selig, who would like the public to believe that he wields more power than Napoleon in his heyday, cannot actually suspend a player for testing positive for Performance Enhancing Substances.

There’s nothing in the Major League Rules (the MLR), which is the real rule book of baseball, that lets him do it.

There never has been.

Under the real rules, Selig’s only option is to suspend steroid cheats for a year or more.

Which means that Manny might want to upgrade his XBox and get comfortable.

Over the two months researching this article, we have spoken to dozens of people inside the game. Drugs and drug policy are the most taboo subject in the game of baseball. Many will talk at length about drugs in baseball, and the back-room games played with anti-doping testing. Few are willing to go on the record fearing reprisals for speaking publicly. Where we quote someone in baseball by their position, their remarks have been corroborated by at least three other people in the game who spoke on background, off the record.

Based upon our reading of all of the documents, and conversations with many who know them well, we believe that Selig broke the rules of the game by suspending players using a side-deal with the union that did not give him the authority. He did it again by sending players still serving suspensions in the major leagues down to the minors to shave off the number of games on their sentences, and yet again by exposing minor leaguers to sanctions in the MLR for playing with the tainted major leaguers.

The Commissioner’s Office appears to cherry-pick rules and agreements to keep the peace, to keep the turnstiles moving, and the product flowing over the airwaves of the MLB Network, and the web of MLB.com.

This is the story of the decay of the National Pastime, dissolving away in back-room games more about money, power and drugs, than baseball.

Continued...

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