Leadership on Steroids

Fallout from yesterday's publication of Major League Baseball's The Mitchell Report runs deep and wide. Regardless of what players did or did not do, one issue provides the underpinnings for every single conversation/debate that will result from the report: RESPONSIBILITY.

Struggling to remain relevant and win back fans in the mid-90s, baseball leadership at every single level focused on one thing and one thing only--winning back fans they had forfeited by canceling the '94 World Series. As long as TV ratings and ballpark attendance climbed back--read: revenue--they literally did not care how or why. Consequently, people's lives, records, integrity of the game, and the public trust are severely damaged.

Here are two lessons:
1. Disengaged leadership--whether intentionally misleading or merely incompetent--always costs an organization in effectiveness and credibility. Commissioners and owners who feign ignorance and shock don't deserve the offices they hold. Union leaders who facilitate and aid illegal activity by hiding behind a defective collective bargaining agreement are laughable. How do these people look Hank Aaron in the eye and say, "Thanks for all you did for the game. Look at how we've stewarded what you gave to us"?
2. Players named in The Mitchell Report should be given an opportunity to refute those allegations fairly. AND, we should all use common sense in hearing those answers. If I ever get to the point that I'm using legal-ese and loopholes to "clear my name", then I've crossed an ethical line.
3. Baseball's problems mirror and augment larger issues of honesty, integrity, and leadership throughout our culture. They didn't create a culture of cheating, but neither have they gone out of their way to be a part of the solution.

Leadership, like integrity, always costs. But, it's a far easier toll to pay than the absence of either.