Mitchell report due tomorrow
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on December 12, 2007 – 7:40 PM6 Comments
ESPN.com’s piece on the imminent Mitchell report on steroids in baseball is long, but comprehensive and worth the time. My sense has been for a while that the report would do very little, save to satisfy those with an interest in closing this issue that it’s now okay to pretend it’s been dealt with, and Bryant’s article (and the people quoted in it) seem to agree with me. I guess we’ll see, but Mitchell is not exactly an unbiased observer, and didn’t have the force of law behind him, so I don’t know how comprehensive, or authoritative, the report can really be. I do know that, if Jose Canseco is the only guy who’s not passing the buck, baseball as a culture maybe has a problem that’s bigger and higher up than the players who use.
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It seems like most of the fans I’ve read (blogs, comments, etc) tend to think the Mitchell report will be nothing to care about too deeply. The deepest level of caring being the peeps I’ve seen who have bets on names that might be in there. But mostly it’s a lot of “there will be no accountability back on the owners or GMs, why is there so much targeting on steroids, this is a witch hunt,” etc.
And there’s probably a lot of selection bias there from me because I deeply deeply don’t care about steroids in baseball. And I don’t consider anyone who used before the testing as “evil dirty cheaters” so I’m waaaaaaaaaaaay on the “whatever” side of this issue.
I fear baseball may have a pretty difficult problem regardless, just for having left it this long. You now have the difficulty of dealing with all the players *up to now* who’ve been juicing and not really examined, and having created a system where juicing has no real drawbacks but very definite advantages, putting players in a difficult position to avoid it.
So it’s a lot harder to sort it out than it should have been. I think it may be getting things put in the “too hard” basket in general, and so the problem’s left to fester.
If Mitchell wants to produce an easier read, he should list those who are clean. Might take up only a page or two.
Hey, how about that dumpy suit Selig was wearing at his post-Mitchell press conference! I felt like he was trying to sell me a used Ford Maverick.
Selig is an opportunistic prick and a schlump, but if we stand a chance of ever getting this whole game right again, I am glad it is he and not Dubya who is MLB commissioner. No doubt, he would have hired Gonzo to do the investigating and later declared that steroids were just the result of faulty intelligence.
It seems rather strange to me that the bulk of his report is based on ‘testimony’ from guys who are in trouble up to their necks. Maybe everyone really is guilty, but it seems kind of rough to drag their names through the mud without any actual proof. Everyone already knew it was possible, and lots of folks will take this as confirmation without reading past the headlines.