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On Feb 26 I fly to SE Florida for my fifth annual Grapefruit League junket with my baseball buddy and host Bill. Between walking to the beach to swim and inspect unsold hi-rise condos, and hanging out at the pool reading newspapers and other mind candy, we’ll get to 3-4 games and remember the joy of being at the ballpark on a sunny day in winter. Although with no Raffy Palmeiro, Miguel Tejada or Sammy Sosa in Orioles camp, I don’t know who will be the target of any snide fan taunts, aside from the occasional Bronx native who tries to start a “Let’s go Yankees” chant.

So Bud Selig agrees to extend his contract as commissioner of MLB til 2014. No doubt the owners want Bud stay around to deal with the residue from the steroid era and negotiate the next collective bargaining agreement with the players in 2011, and take the rap for whatever goes poorly him when he goes. Besides, if I’m Don Fehr and I know Bud is leaving next summer, I might want to stall on doing anything more about performance enhancers, and eagerly await the chance to Jedi-mind trick a new commissioner about the next labor deal.

Occasionally I’m asked whether the whole steroid/HGH flap has diminished my enthusiasm for MLB. I must say it hasn’t. Maybe if I had a kid who was really into baseball and were faced with discussing the kid’s questions about why these guys cheated, I’d feel more conflicted. Perhaps if my team hadn’t just come off its first winning season in 15 years and weren’t a favorite to end a 26 year playoff drought I might get to fewer games.

How I feel about a player when he played and how he handles allegations that he used in public affect how I view a player. I’m less worried about whether Roger Clemens used steroids than I am about how non-believable and jerky he’s been on this whole thing since the Mitchell Report was issued. He threw the following short list of people under the bus while trying to defend himself: his trainer, two of his teammates, his team doctor, his wife, his agent and his handlers, the players association, Sen Mitchell himself. He also interrupted the closing statement of the chairman of a Congressional committee during his closing statement, secretly taped phone conversations with his former trainer trying to trap him, sucked up to members of Congress on the committee before his hearing by signing autographs for them, and refused to take any responsibility for anything that has happened during his career that didn’t go according to plan. I didn’t like him before, and I like him less now. Even if he is clean, I’d advise against suggesting that either kids or adults emulate Roger Clemens.

Still, there’s enough blame to go around. Shame on MLB for needing Congress to have a session to try to get to the bottom of a single performance enhancing substance case. Shame on the Players Union for telling players to stonewall the Mitchell Commission (advice for which Clemens is paying a huge price, but he doesn’t even own up to that). Shame on Congress for turning the hearing into a partisan bickering session. I’ll close with a few good Jayson Stark quotes: 1) “Maybe Republicans automatically gravitate toward the wealthy and famous” Republicans were very soft on Clemens) and 2) “why didn’t anyone ask what Clemens was thinking when he threw that shard of broken bat at Mike Piazza in the 2000 World Series??