Two business partners are having lunch at a swanky Midtown restaurant when one suddenly erupts, “I think I left the safe open!”
His partner places a reassuring hand on his arm and calmly says, “What are you worried about? We’re both here.”
And that, baseball fans, is why election to the Hall of Fame has become an annual test of individual conscience over legit and illegitimate achievement.
The antagonists in this case remain former MLB commissioner and fast-tracked Hall of Famer Bud Selig, and ex-MLBPA boss Donald Fehr — natural business enemies who, unless they were blind, determined to keep the obvious their little secret.
So the abruptly mass-muscled, sudden-slugger steroid users operated via a see/say-no-evil silence that would allow the Sammy Sosas, Barry Bondses and Mark McGwires to feed MLB’s bottom lines via ticket sales, TV contracts, ad revenues, etc.
While those in charge saw and said nothing about suddenly swollen arms, heads and slugging stats among sudden Supermen, did it ever dawn on them that the cover on this eventually had to be blown to bits?
But they pretended to be the last to see what few could miss. They chose to do lasting, historic harm to baseball, avoiding responsibility and blame as if PEDs were a natural pestilence suddenly infecting the fields of dreams.
Heck, Selig portrayed himself as the knight in shining armor — Reynolds Wrap is a proud sponsor of Major League Baseball — who arrived not a moment too soon to save baseball from its drug scourge, while Fehr became executive director of the NHLPA.
So now, baseball media, including The Post’s Jon Heyman, are forced to explain why the greatest statistical achievers — record-breakers and record-shatterers — didn’t make their cut as a matter of conscience, as they chose not to bestow immortal reward on the proven and highly suspected dirty.
Yet, there were so many who should have known better who were either sucked in or sought to cash in. The late Tim McCarver, as baseball savvy as anyone who played and observed the game, quickly wrote a book, “The Perfect Season: Why 1998 Was Baseball’s Greatest Year.”
That year, McGwire hit 70 home runs, Sosa hit 66, and 13 total players hit 40 or more — including steroid-listed Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Rafael Palmeiro and Jose Canseco.
For crying out loud, Bud, in 1996 Brady Anderson, who hit 16 homers the season before, hit 50! Year after year Selig couldn’t pick up the scent while Fehr abandoned the good and welfare of clean players.
Selig, who only spoke of MLB success in terms of revenue, left his bottom-line legacy for Hall of Fame voters to now weigh, debate and act on as a matter of conscience instead of a player’s achievement.
And now the Hall of Fame, the one that mattered most, is haunted by greed.
And, please, I don’t want to hear from any ESPN or Fox voice on Hall of Fame voting and candidacies unless they preface their comments with, “Recall that after the retirement of Alex Rodriguez, one of the most notorious drug users and chronic liars, this network rushed to hire him as its voice and face of Major League Baseball.”
Woulda Ya Sunday: If I told you that an NBA team would make 23 of 46 — 50 percent — 3-point shots in a game, would you reasonably surmise that team won, and by a lot?
Well, Tuesday the Pelicans hit 23 of 46 and lost to the 12-for-36 Jazz by 29, 153-124. Kinda like the NBA All-Star Game without the stars. Dee-fense!
Charles Barkley ripped the NFL and its team owners as “greedy pigs” for placing the Dolphins-Chiefs playoff game behind a paywall. Couldn’t agree more.
Reminds me of the greedy pig with a profound and admitted gambling problem who had to be chased by a Vegas casino for an unpaid marker in excess of $400,000, but then starred in come-on commercials for sucker-bet sports gambling operations.
Goes by the name Barkley, Charles Barkley.
Maybe it’s because I just paid 400 bucks to have my remaining teeth cleaned, but Joey Gallo has not hit above .199 his past three seasons. At the same time, he struck out 518 times — almost every two at-bats. He just signed a one-year, $5 million deal with the Nationals, his fifth team in four years. Sanctuary!
Reader Keith Marston wonders why the NHL would choose to compete for TV audiences with late-starting, prime-time NFL playoff games.
Last weekend against the NFL playoffs, eight NHL games were played Saturday night, just four in the afternoon. Sunday, one NHL afternoon game, five at night against Chiefs-Bills.
Reader Brad Behan on the Yankees’ signing of lifetime .188 hitter Jose Rojas: “His exit velocity numbers must be outstanding.” … We had no idea that the Eagles’ Jason Kelce could be such a classless jerk until we saw him drunk, bare-chested, beer can in hand and nearly falling out of a suite Sunday in Buffalo. … Reader Mike Mike Soper on last week’s trade between the last-place Pistons and last-place Wizards: “That’s like the Titanic and Andrea Doria swapping deck hands.”
For your Chiefs-Ravens pregame Sunday, I suggest @BackAftaThis to hear Mike Francesa’s authoritative claim that likely NFL MVP Lamar Jackson will never make it as an NFL QB, that he needs to find a different position. … Finally, reader A. Masliansky asks why Fox found it necessary to have six people speak a few words — no room for complete sentences or useful thoughts — during its NFL studio show last week. Why six? Because there wasn’t room for seven.
The court storming at Ohio State that left Iowa star Caitlin Clark knocked to the floor last week — even if, as some have suggested, Clark laid it on thick, no spectators belonged on the floor — led to the latest warning that, “One day, someone is going to be badly hurt.”
Too late.
Longtime ESPN producer/writer/investigative reporter Willie Weinbaum years ago reported the 2004 end of Joe Kay’s life as he, his family and friends knew it.
Kay — a 6-foot-6, two-sports star who scored a perfect 800 on his math SATs — was the star player when his Arizona high school basketball team beat its rival at the buzzer.
There was a sudden court storming among the reported 2,000 spectators. Kay, not yet 18 and headed to Stanford on a volleyball scholarship, was knocked to the floor and trampled.
He suffered a profound brain injury. He had to relearn to walk, talk, eat and whatever it took to live.
Yet, ESPN college basketball analysts, with the exception of Jay Williams — whose NBA career ended quickly when he was nearly killed in a motorcycle crash — determined that such audience participation is good, clean ritualistic fun.
Even with the video of the courtside spectator rescued after he was knocked out of his wheelchair by a “let’s have fun!” crowd rush, it’s still a good way to exhibit school spirit and snap selfies!
