“Every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in,” Michael Corleone (Godfather: Part III).

Sometimes I think Bud Selig feels a little like Al Pacino as the Godfather. He’s endured a couple federal investigations and he believes that he may finally be on the road to unquestioned legitimacy.

Then, bam, A-Rod rocks the baseball-verse when he is out-ed for using steroids when he was a Texas Ranger, including his first MVP season. Then next thing you know A-Rod is out for the first month of the season. The New York Yankees miss him in what is apparently a juiced-ballpark with a wind carrying meager fly balls out to the bleachers in center field.

Personally I think Selig ordered his injury just to let the whole story blow over since we the American public have an attention span of about 15 seconds and A-Rod’s not playing would give us time to forget.

Then, when it appears things might be alright Manny Ramirez is caught using pills that increase estrogen, the precursor to testosterone, the precursor to 60 home run seasons. Suddenly the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ quick start is in jeopardy since Ramirez is as much a performance enhancer for the Dodgers line up as steroids were for Bonds home run chase.

Selig is prompted to act. He could blow off the 2003 probe as an agreement between the league and the players union to keep the results secret, but the public would not be withheld their scapegoat a second, third,…or 110^th time.

Ramirez, the player who tried to game the free agent system and got absolutely nowhere, is then suspended for 50 games and will lose a third of that lucrative contract.

I think the Dodgers have to see this as a slight win because suddenly seven million dollars comes off the books. Meanwhile, Selig is sitting in his office with the shades drawn wishing the steroid storm would finally pass or that he had a brother like Vito to kill off to tie up some loose ends.

The positive for Selig is that American sports fans seem to no longer care about such atrocities for the game. We seem to have become jaded by player strikes and a political landscape as corrupt as ever.

We seem to yearn for ignorance and continue to buy up Boston Red Sox tickets because their curse has finally been lifted and it feels good to be a sports fan in New England and Chicago Cubs tickets because sitting the bleachers drinking a paycheck’s worth of Old Style and Bud Light is better than sitting in an office.

So, like Michael Corleone, Selig is the head of a flawed league with long shadows cast by unsavory behavior. We all know it just like the authorities knew the Corleone family’s wealth was bathed in blood and Michael’s estranged wife and children knew he killed his own brother.

The best Selig can hope for is for his daughter to not enter the league and make the league the most un-compelling of the Big Three.