‘Out of Touch’ has become a pop cultural phrase, a talking point with power. ‘Out of Touch,’ helped get the President elected. ‘Out of Touch,’ is the worst badge that can be placed on a public personality, be it a corporate CEO or a politician.

In the case of Bud Selig, he is both a corporate CEO and a politician ‘Out of Touch’ with what is going on below him. I recently joked that with Selig’s $18.5 million annual salary, he could purchase 300,000 of his favorite red ties. That was last week. This week, he says Alex Rodriguez has ‘shamed the game.’

‘Out of Touch,’ will be Selig’s legacy if he will not allow it to be the accountability he is forcing players to accept.

He has wildly succeeded as a businessman, driving the game to unseen revenue levels, the ultimate owner’s commissioner. One of Selig’s public talking points in recent years has been that Major League Baseball, his MLB, is in a golden age.

But for whom does the Bud toll?

‘Out of Touch’ is Selig’s legacy right now and will be until he shares in taking the bullet his players are taking for him.

Historically speaking, I don’t believe Rodriguez’s admission that he used performance-enhancing drugs is as significant as why Rodriguez was exposed, who exposed him, and what that party stood to gain. Alex Rodriguez is simply the final score, like the end of the 1919 World Series. We know the Black Sox lost, but it took decades to understand why and how they cheated.

Selig’s MLB is ‘Out of Touch’ with the common fan, because while the industry makes money, he cannot face that the industry he helped create is the very entity he says has shamed his MLB.

Baseball is the ultimate information business, but it continues to only plead ignorance by exposing and then humiliating others.

There is a moment in the Rodriguez interview where he bites his lip, and one may get the distinct impression that Rodriguez knows he has been willfully set-up and that he knows he cannot say that he suspects he has been purposefully chosen. Everything about his interview was chosen, conducted, manufactured and manipulated as carefully as the infield grass.

The best Rodriguez could do was claim the Nuremburg Defense of ‘I was only following orders.’

Whose orders?

Rodriguez has always been an athlete infatuated with his image, but the paradox is that he has never seemed comfortable. Narcissism is a character flaw, but not a crime. If Bud Selig is ‘Out of Touch,’ with the public, Rodriguez has always seemed to be ‘Out of Touch,’ with his teammates and with himself.

That, perhaps, is why Rodriguez is the perfect fall guy for the Steroid Era.

He gave up what Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens would not, and he surrendered it with relative ease.

I’m always struck by the timing of baseball steroid revelations, how they always seem to come right before Spring Training. It is as though baseball purges itself before the steroid cycle can interfere with regular season’s news cycle (and Bud forbid) the precious playoffs.

I’ve seen this pitch before, but this time baseball is throwing a new cutter: the player who took the fall and admitted what the ‘Out of Touch’ Commissioner will not. Perhaps, so the Commissioner does not have to.

If Alex Rodriguez were to look in the mirror, the reflection he might see is Bud Selig’s. Both men are ‘Out of Touch,’ but only one is powerful enough to get away with it.

This has nothing to do with popularity of the game, who belongs in the Hall of Fame or who exposed whom. Both men are interested in their legacy.

I believe it would pain Selig to know how ‘Out of Touch,’ he truly is with the baseball populace beneath him. This is the Commissioner who fancies himself as a normal fan. But he is as disconnected as the former First Fan, and like him, he refused to say he himself did anything wrong.

Bud Selig’s policy’s made billions, but with a price of humanity. There is a very deep divide in this country between passion for baseball and love of major league baseball. I’m using lower cases for a reason. Earn my respect and I will capitalize it again.

Selig is the only one who can finally close this epoch of the steroid era. Drugs are here to stay in one manner or another, regardless of baseball’s in-house testing. The irony is people don’t really care anymore. What is incredibly destructive is trashing the players who are as guilty as Selig and his 30 owners.

Take the bullet, Bud. You’ll still be in the Hall of Fame. Just say, ‘I knew it. It was good for gate. You liked it. I wanted to give you what you wanted.’

Until Selig speaks these words, he will always be the greatest ‘Out of Touch’ commissioner in the history of modern American sports.

John Klima’s book “Willie’s Boys: The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, the Last Negro League World Series, and the Making of a Baseball Legend,” will be published in Fall 2009 by John Wiley & Sons Publishers.