The Mitchell Report

The Mitchell Report has been released, yesterday in fact, breaking open the case on steroids in major league baseball and exposing all the players who have gained an unfair advantage by using performance enhancing drugs. Now we can expect some discipline and change.

Not so much.

All this report has done is name a few names to satisfy the righteous public and the oblivious Bud Selig, who still thinks he had nothing to do with the whole mess. It's all hearsay & conjecture which in an actual court of law is completely worthless. All it really does is throw 85 more players under the bus, trying to place blame, trying to make sense, trying to justify spending the money on the investigation that won't really garner an outcome of any significance. Some players named are long retired like David Justice & Lenny Dykstra. Some are still playing like Miguel Tejada & Andy Pettitte. Some are batters. Some are pitchers. Some like pina colada. Some like getting caught in the rain. It's all useless.

What exactly do they think is gonna come from all this? Suspensions? Okay. Asterisks? Ooooh. You can't 'take away' records. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. The homeruns were hit. The strikeouts occurred. You gonna say they never happened? And if they never happened now you're talking about going back and changing the outcome of games. Team records' change. Different teams go to the playoffs. Different teams win the World Series. I mean there are over 20 Yankees named from their glory years. Are they gonna march into Yankee Stadium and pry the World Series trophies out of George Steinbrenner's cold dead hands? It is just ridiculous to even suggest that taking away their records will be a solution. It may make you feel better about it, kinda sticking to those cheaters, but it sure is not a solution.

And that's only for the players that hold records like Barry Bonds & Roger Clemens. What about the 50 some odd names on the list that are relatively unknown or just merely mediocre players. What to do with them? What can we take away from them besides dignity? We can drag them thru the mud to make ourselves feel better about the whole situation. Or maybe we can use them to come to the conclusion that just simply using steroids does not make you a great player. You must actually have some talent to begin with.

And let's remember that these are only the names we've been given by one or two disgruntled trainers. I can't imagine this being anything but the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of users will slip thru the net because they were smart enough not to get caught or pay for the steroids with a check with their name on it (Paul Lo Duca). This is a he said/he said conundrum that can't be held to any regard, especially not when deciding who goes into the Hall of Fame. I'd love to see people try and keep Roger Clemens out of the Hall of Fame. But you can't let Clemens in and not let public enemy #1 Barry Bonds in. If anything, the evidence against Clemens is more damning. He actually has someone who will testify to sticking a needle in his butt. They can barely get Bonds on purgery. I'm interested to see how that all plays out.

This whole era of baseball, since 1988, is being labeled as the Steroids Era. There. Be done with it. Players used steroids. No, not all, but most. So who cares anymore.? If you want it to stop then someone like, God help us, Bud Selig has to step up and change it. If you wanna be a famous baseball player, in the public eye, make thousands of dollars, be responsible for millions of dollars in revenue, then Yes, you should be held to a higher standard. Drug testing should not be beneath you. It is not an invasion of your privacy. It is a sterilization of the game you love & a leveling of the playing field.

-or-

Do nothing. I for one don't really think pumping yourself full of steroids gives players more of an advantage then popping a handful ibuprofen before they head out the field. Just one is legal, one is not. One is controlled by the FDA, one is not. So that is not a baseball issue. It is a legal issue that has nothing to do with the speed of your fastball. So let them take steroids. Let's not pretend other sports don't cheat. There's HGH use in football, tennis, even golf! Let's not pretend we live in a world where there's no 'cheating' in politics, education, marriage. I know that's a little drastic, but is it not based on the same concepts & morals? And if you don't want the steroids in the highschools try paying a little more involved with your kids and not let them be raised by the television.

Let's not forget what this has done for baseball. Before the whole steroids business started baseball was floundering. Football was becoming the new pasttime. Enter steroids. Homerun records are broken. Players become giants. National attention redirected back to the baseball diamond. Baseball goes from a 1.3 billion to 6.2 billion dollar industry in under 10 years. All due to steroids apparently. Maybe that's why Selig kept his mouth shut for so long. Game saved. Money made.

The Mitchell Report is being fascinated over. But it's inability to be a complete list of every player ever to stick a needle in his buttocks, or lay out a reasonable and at the very least possible solution to this steroids issue renders it completely useless. Just a 409 page list of names. That's it. Did you know there were also some recommendations made by Mitchell on how to fix steroids debacle? No you didn't because all we care about are the names. Who can we point fingers at? At his press conference Mitchell could have been performing numbers from a Judy Garland cabaret and no one would have been the wiser because everyone was scurrying their greasy fingers past the substance to find the names. Names! More names! Barry finally has company.

Ok. So we got names. Now what?