The Has-been

Shadow Games

Can anyone in politics bat clean-up?

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Thursday, March 30, 2006

A Couple of Ringers: President Bush isn’t the only one looking for relief these days. In the wake of the bestselling expose Game of Shadows about Barry Bonds’s alleged steroid use, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig today  named former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to lead an inquiry into steroids and the game. Earlier this week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer is working as an MLB consultant and tried unsuccessfully to get Selig an advance copy of the book.

There’s no question that baseball is good for politics. Presidents have been throwing out first pitches for a century. Politics had a lot to do with MLB’s decision to bring baseball back to Washington, and while many locals grumbled, the political class led the cheers.

But this week’s moves to bring in a righty and a southpaw raise a question that many MLB insiders have no doubt been pondering since the Washington Nationals ordeal began last year: Is politics good for baseball?

Mitchell is a director of the Red Sox; Fleischer a diehard Yankee fan – so Selig has his bases covered. As a respected statesman and former judge who loves the game, Mitchell is a capable choice. Running the Senate and bringing peace to Northern Ireland were just a warm-up for the job of studying superstars’ past urine tests.

Fleischer didn’t exactly do much to buff his last big client’s image, but no one doubts his enthusiasm for baseball. He used to play catch with Bush on the White House lawn and clown around with big leaguers who came to visit. White House reporters who suffered through Fleischer’s non-responsive press briefings must have laughed during his book tour when he told Sports Illustrated that Bonds is the one who’s “not media-friendly.”

Whiffs: But setting these two relievers aside, the real question is whether the political world has any credibility left to bring the baseball world. While the Bonds probe leads today’s sports page, the front-page headlines across the country are about the sentencing of longtime Washington insider and skybox sleazeball Jack Abramoff. Yesterday, the Senate passed an ethics bill that prohibits elected officials from accepting free tickets to ball games. The Republican point man on ethics (and leading steroid critic), John McCain, voted against the bill as too weak. “The good news is there will be more indictments, and we will be revisiting this issue,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Fan-in-Chief’s popularity ratings are so low that he seems to have brought not only “The West Wing” but also “Commander in Chief” down with him. Jessica Simpson won’t meet with him, Republican congressmen won’t campaign with him, and if Bush wants to throw out the first pitch at RFK, the Washington Nationals catcher will probably go along only if he can wear his mask.

Perhaps Selig had no other choices. When baseball turned to Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis to clean up the game after the Black Sox scandal, judges stood head and shoulders above scruffy ballplayers. Today, judges are often as tainted by politics as politicians. Much as Sam Alito might have jumped at the chance to don his Little League uniform again, even a Supreme Court justice would no longer be seen as impartial on the issues in the Bonds case – drug testing, privacy, the league’s contract with the players union.

In the end, unless federal prosecutors press charges against Bonds, the dilemma for Selig and Mitchell will be whether to toss the Giants star from the game for using substances that weren’t prohibited, or put an asterisk in the record books to say his home-run marks don’t count. If Selig wanted a magic asterisk, perhaps he should have beaten Bush to the punch, and brought in former OMB director Josh Bolten.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Bullpen:   In last week’s story, “Are Late Innings the Time for a Relief Pitcher?,” a leading Republican told the New York Times that President Bush should look at a shakeup as “replacing a struggling pitcher in the later innings of a baseball game, rather than as a vote of no-confidence in a friend.” I figured that this week might be the time Bush went to the bullpen, so over the weekend I did some research to find out what kind of relievers this old baseball owner used to pick.

The answer surprised me. With the exception of Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan, the Texas Rangers have always been a team of sluggers, not pitchers. But in the five seasons that Bush ran the team, from 1989 to 1993, the Rangers’ bullpen finished near the bottom of the American League only once.

In Bush’s first year as managing partner, his bullpen ace was Jeff Russell, who had led the National League in losses in his first full season with the Cincinnati Reds. As a Ranger, Russell led the league with 38 saves, enough to win the 1989 Rolaids Relief Award.

In his last year before stepping down to run for governor, Bush turned to Tom Henke, a superb reliever who spent most of his career with the Toronto Blue Jays and finished with 311 saves and a 2.67 career earned-run average. For the Rangers, Henke pitched even better than Russell, saving 40 games in 1993.

The sole blot on Bush’s bullpen record has nothing to do with the men who pitched. Russell earned his footnote in baseball history not as a Rolaids award-winner, but as one of three players Bush traded to the Oakland Athletics for steroids peddler Jose Canseco. If Canseco can be believed, he used the Rangers clubhouse to start juicing other major leaguers, including Rafael Palmeiro—whose later failure to pass a drug test earned him the distinction of being one of the few miscreants in any field to be investigated by the current Republican Congress.

To the Showers: Back when Bush was running the Rangers, his relievers were better than his starting staff. Today’s decision to go to the bullpen and tap Josh Bolten to replace Andrew Card as chief of staff suggests that Bush is still following the same pattern.

Bolten is not what disgruntled Republicans in Washington wanted in a shake-up: an outsider who would listen to them and knock some sense into a White House gone awry. But he is everything Bush wanted: smart, loyal, competent—in general, a step up from the struggling Card.

Bolten’s experience mirrors that of two of Bill Clinton’s successful relievers. Like Leon Panetta, who took over as Clinton’s chief of staff in 1994, Bolten served as director of the Office of Management and Budget—the one post that rivals White House chief of staff as a place to learn everything the government is up to and how an administration works. Like John Podesta, who closed out Clinton’s second term, Bolten spent time as deputy chief of staff—an ideal perch to earn the loyalty of the White House staff, learn its strengths and weaknesses, and understudy for the top job.

As a bonus, Bolten is the only senior White House official with any real expertise in domestic policy. He developed Bush’s policy agenda in the 2000 campaign and oversaw all policy operations as deputy chief of staff. Bolten may not know how to get his money back at Target, but he’s a relative wonk in a White House full of hacks.

Of course, his track record on policy is no better than Bush’s. As OMB director, Bolten set the all-time record for largest single-season budget deficit.

Wednesday, Mar. 22, 2006

Wednesday, Mar. 22, 2006