Baseball fans' love of their sport reduces concerns about the impact of the Mitchell Report on drug use or the fate of Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball (MLB) Commissioner Bud Selig said on Wednesday.

 

"We've had this steroid cloud, as it's been referred to, for the last four years and every year we break all-time attendance records and we'll do it again next year," Selig told the Reuters Media Summit, adding that the image of the game was important to him.

 

"The game has this amazing hold on people," Selig said. "Even (despite) the negative things."

 

Baseball revenues increased last season from US$5.2 billion to US$6.08 billion, boosted by record 2007 attendances of more than 78 million. Selig predicts that more than 80 million people will attend games next season.

 

Cleaned up

 

He said baseball now had a tough doping policy, adding that he ordered the probe by former US Senator George Mitchell to clear the air.

 

"You've taken care of the present, for the future you have to be vigilant," Selig said. "But I didn't want anybody to think that in any way we were hiding anything, so I said we need an investigation of the past.

 

"People have often suggested I must be nervous about the Mitchell Report. Not at all. I'm not the least bit concerned. Nobody can ever say we tried to hide something. This has been an exhaustive, thorough investigation.

 

"I think our fans understand that we care."

 

Selig said home-run king Bonds, indicted on federal charges that he lied to a grand jury about his use of steroids, had a long legal road ahead of him.

 

"The Barry Bonds case will play out the way it will play out," he said. "This is something that Mr Bonds is going to have to deal with and resolve and this sport is moving on."

 

Selig is optimistic about further growth for baseball, pointing to more international exposure for MLB, which will have season-opening games next year in Japan between the World Series champion Boston Red Sox and Oakland Athletics.

 

The commissioner also pointed to creation of a MLB TV channel in 2009, which he said would launch with at least 50 million subscribers.

 

Improvements are, however, being considered.

 

"We need to speed the pace of the game up," he said. "There's no question that some of the World Series games lasted too long," Selig said about the Fall Classic between the Red Sox and Colorado Rockies in which one nine-inning game took four hours 19 minutes.

 

"We're going to enforce rules and we're going to consider rule changes," he said.

 

(Agencies via China Daily November 30, 2007)