McClelland was the guest speaker at an Iowa Hawkeye baseball dinner last night, and naturally, the conversation turned to talk of steroids. He says that it was completely obvious to him that many, many players were on the juice, but when you really think about it ... who cares?

"They used it to make themselves better," McClelland said. "I can't fault a player for doing that. It was not against the rules of baseball, so I can't fault a player for trying to make himself better."

I'm tempted to make fun of McClelland for not knowing that steroids actually were against the rules as far back 1992, since, you know ... he's an umpire and everything. On the other hand, maybe what he's really saying is that they were against the rules of the league, not against the rules of the game, which is all he need concern himself with, right? (Players also weren't tested or punished for them, so it's sort of like playing the game without umpires.)

What's worse, is that I can't even make a joke about umps being blind, because even a blind ump calling a game with his head firmly lodged in his own ass could see that these guys were taking something.

"I had a catcher tell me, 'Us peons have to get off steroids; we can't afford them,'" McClelland said. "He said the guys that make the big money, because they put up the big numbers, can get the synthetic steroids, and they can stay on them, and that's not fair.

"What he was telling me is that there were a lot of guys on steroids."

So you take steroids to make more money ... but you can't get steroids without already having money. That's quite a dilemma.

"I'd like to see people kind of get over it," McClelland said. "It was part of that era. In 2004, baseball instituted the ban on steroids. The previous 15 years, you just have to realize there were a lot of people taking steroids."

That's actually completely reasonable. I take back every thing I said about his mother at that Boston game back in '96.

McClelland: Steroids part of era [Iowa City Press-Citizen, via Bugs & Cranks]

Ventura, speaking on the online news program Your Turn, said the logic behind it just doesn't add up:

"My question is: They've now determined 104 baseball players failed their steroid test in 2003 – 104! They indicted Vince McMahon, why aren't they indicting Bud Selig?"

And Yahoo!'s Dan Wetzel thinks Ventura not only has a point, but suggests that Major League Baseball under Bud Selig might even be more detestable than the steroid-friendly, halcyon days of the WWE:

McMahon, who beat the conspiracy to distribute steroids charges in 1994, actually ran an honest operation compared to Selig. While Hulk Hogan may have claimed he was just "eating his vitamins," anyone over the age of 12 understood the entire thing was make-believe, just entertainment.

Not Selig. Not baseball. They clung to an illusion they either knew wasn't true or should've known wasn't true. When confronted repeatedly with facts that the game was a sham, they reacted at a glacial pace.

Selig is so surrounded by yes-men and so comforted by apologists in the media – or organizations willing to suspend anyone who mocks him – that he believes his own lunacy.

Obviously, this is in response to Selig's baffling defensiveness about his role in baseball's steroid era, where he acted shocked and appalled over public sentiments implicating him in the whole mess. Basically, WHY AREN'T PEOPLE CONGRATULATING ME FOR MAKING SO MUCH MONEY?, or something to that effect. Maybe Scott Van Pelt's characterization of him as pimp wasn't as far-fetched as it originally appeared?

Did Selig Allow MLB To Become WWE? [Yahoo! Sports]

Yes, Bud Selig has been the commissioner of baseball (first acting, than permanent) since 1992, which pretty much coincides with the beginning and end of what will forever be known as the "steroid era," but that doesn't mean he failed to do anything about it. I mean, they totally nailed Neifi Perez to the wall! Worst of all, when you say things like that it makes him feel bad.

"I don't want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn't care about it," Selig said. "That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I'm sensitive to the criticism. The reason I'm so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we've come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible."

That's true. I never dreamed that such a large number of fans would consider an entire decade of the sport to be essentially invalid. But hey ... he tried!

"I'm not sure I would have done anything differently," Selig said. "A lot of people say we should have done this or that, and I understand that. They ask me, 'How could you not know?' and I guess in the retrospect of history, that's not an unfair question. But we learned and we've done something about it. When I look back at where we were in '98 and where we are today, I'm proud of the progress we've made."

Selig said he pushed for a more stringent drug policy during the labor negotiations of 2002 but ultimately settled for a watered-down version out of fear that the players association would force another work stoppage.

"Starting in 1995, I tried to institute a steroid policy," Selig said. "Needless to say, it was met with strong resistance. We were fought by the union every step of the way."

See? It's the union's fault, of course! Just because the player's union holds Selig personally responsible for collusion (when he was owner of the Brewers) and that inherent mistrust has spoiled every labor negotiation of the last 20 years, that's no reason to blame the commissioner of the entire sport for not being able to negotiate a reasonable solution that might have rescued a small piece of the integrity of the game from being trampled like a Red Sox fan in the South Bronx.

He saved the All-Star Game, remember?

Commissioner Bud Selig defends his record [Newsday]

Now, this is only a hypothetical list — none of these players have been accused or are even rumored to be on the '03 survey testing. The reason A-Rod's name popped up seems a little coincidental, considering that SI's Selena Roberts, one of the writers who broke the original story, is coming out with a book about Alex Rodriguez this May. Most baseball fans (and sports fans, in general) are pretty jaded by all this steroid talk. As long as there is a heartfelt apology attached, then let's move on. But here's a list of players whose careers would be seriously altered should their names pop up.

• Curt Schilling, Boston Red Sox: Schilling's been stridently anti-steroid and tireless in separating himself from the needle-injecting evil doers who have tainted his game. He's even demanded that the list of all the players who failed the test be publicly named so that the rest of the innocent players aren't just guilty by association. But what if his name pops up on the list? It would disastrous to his bloody sock legacy, but would also probably get him to shut the hell up for once. Finally.

• Derek Jeter, New York Yankees: Jeter's baseball reputation is pretty untarnished up to this point, that is if you count dalliances with young actresses or sabermetric knobs' conclusions that he's a crappy fielder blemishes. But Jeter popping up on the list of 103 would seem to rattle the baseball purists to the point of no return; if Jeter was using 'roids the whole time, does the fawning over his heart and hustle completely disappear and make him just an ordinary player for the rest of his career?

• Chase Utley, Philadelphia Phillies: He's consistently hailed as a throwback player and one who overachieves beyond his natural abilities and physicality to put up inflated power numbers. He's soft-spoken, humble, and always seems to say the right thing in public. You know, besides World Series victory parades in front of a live television audience.

• Greg Maddux, retired: He's the consummate "pitcher's pitcher" who's managed to rack up 355 wins throughout his career without overpowering stuff. Always lauded for his work ethic and his ability to out-think opposing batters, his Hall of Fame status could potentially be ruined if it turns out he'd been juicing for the sake of inching up the record books and prolonging his career.

• Albert Pujols, St. Louis Cardinals: Leitch hinted that his trainer might have been on the initial Grimsely list back in 2006 and the Emeritus became the most hated man in the Midwest for a short period of time. (My favorite rip on Will at the time came from a writer who said something along the lines of, "He authored a book called 'Life As A Loser.' That's a surprise.") But what if you found out that Pujols' ridiculous slugging percentage and consistency were HGH-enhanced? He would go from perennial MVP candidate to Giambi-like, comeback player of the year candidate depending on how sincere his apology was.