If ever there was a physical embodiment of the cliche "a day late and a dollar short," it is baseball commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig.

Better never than late

Something - usually embarrassing, illegal or stupid - has to happen to baseball before anyone in a position of authority reacts. In the last 15 years, the former national pastime has exhibited all the foresight of an operator at the Psychic Friends Network.

Canceling the World Series, allowing the All-Star game to end in a tie, unchecked steroid and amphetamine use - you name it, baseball has found a way to bungle it.

And the steroid mess is the biggest blunder of all. First turning a blind eye to it, then implementing a somewhat toothless policy, then getting grilled by Congress, then after Congress virtually gives the NFL a victory parade last week in similar hearings, Bud and his boys propose a much stiffer set of penalties, plus the banishment of amphetamines.

Fifty games for a first offense, 100 games for a second and lifetime banishment for a third.

A day late and a dollar short.

(By the way, Paul Tagliabue and the rest of the NFL should send Bud a nice gift basket. The way baseball has bungled steroids testing makes football look like paragons of clean play by comparison, and the league escaped the harsh questions it should have faced, just like MLB, about players beating tests and whether the league is all that interested in catching offenders. As Associated Press columnist Tim Dahlberg wrote last week, up to seven percent of middle school girls have admitted to using steroids. You're telling me that in the 15 years the NFL has been testing for steroids there have only been 54 violators? In a league of 350-pound behemoths? Come on, who's kidding who?)

Really, what Bud has done is a shrewd political move - take a hard-line stance and put the pressure on the union. If Donald Fehr and his charges accept the stiffer guidelines proposed by Selig, everybody wins. If they reject the proposal, or counter with something not as harsh, the commissioner wins a valuable PR battle by looking tough while the union caved.

What it boils down to isn't so much cleaning the sport of steroids, but rather looking like you're cleaning the sport of steroids.

Honestly, how hard can it be to eradicate substances which are already against the law?

Andrew Hinkelman is a sports writer for The Daily Inter Lake. He can be reached at hink@dailyinterlake.com