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)