The Morning Report
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Now that David Wells appears retired for good, with no more comebacks on the horizon, here’s a job the former Padres pitcher and Point Loma High alum is more qualified for than most people in baseball: Commissioner of Baseball.
Maybe if Jose Canseco had a little more David Wells in him, baseball — from Commissioner Bud Selig to weepy-eyed romantics such as ESPN’s Peter Gammons to naïve fans — wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss his accounts of widespread steroid use in the game.
After all, no one would ever accuse Wells, with his round physique of 6-foot-3, 250-pounds, of using a performance enhancing drugs.
Wells has admitted a few other things — including pitching his 1998 perfect game with a hangover — but those incidents make him sound more like a fun-loving Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle than a phony Roger Clemens or Alex Rodriguez.
Wells, who turns 46 Wednesday, was recently at Yankee Stadium for a Twins-Yankees game as an analyst on a TBS broadcast that recognized the 11th anniversary of his perfect game. He discussed Clemens, who is facing possible perjury charges for denying before Congress he used steroids, and Rodriguez, who admitted to steroids use when he played for the Texas Rangers.
Wells’ comments on the air and in the New York Times were refreshing. I wish more ballplayers would candidly come out and raise doubts about Clemens, Rodriguez and those of their ilk for what they did to the integrity game instead of silently grumbling about it.
Wells told a humorous story about how he turned the tables on Clemens at a charity golf tournament a year ago by shouting out “Hey, Eli!” to him.
“I called him Eli because for years, he called me Eli,” Wells told the Times, explaining that Clemens used to say of Wells, “Whatever comes out of his mouth, he lies.”
“Well, I got my payback,” Wells said. “It was great.”
Wells said Clemens hasn’t spoken to him since then. Not that Wells minds.
About Rodriguez, Wells was quoted saying, “I mean, the home runs that he hit off me in Texas, should those count? I don’t know. Maybe they should have a league. They should say if everyone is doing it, let them do it. But if they do it, they’re not entitled to go into the Hall of Fame if they got Hall of Fame numbers.”
Such observations are nothing new for Wells, who won 239 games in his career. In his autobiography, “Perfect I’m Not,” he raised the issue of steroids when he talked about playing in the minor leagues and facing a skinny kid that couldn’t hit that turned a few years to be the steroid-inflated Canseco.
Baseball was slow to test for performance enhancing drugs and even now the testing isn’t as tough as the Olympic or testing in other sports.
David “Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis” Wells might not want to leave retirement and his softball league in San Diego for living in New York, but he would fix the steroids mess.
“I’d just ban them right out of the get-go,” Wells said. “I think that would be great. That would stop them in a heartbeat, especially with the money that they’re giving out today.”