Now that I've had a few hours to digest everything, here's my thought on The Mitchell Report:
Meh.
I think that Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News hit it right on the head: this was just enough juicy meat (Roger Clemens! Andy Pettitte! Miguel Tejada!) to keep the media satisfied, without actually addressing any of the big picture problems or assigning real blame (or consequences) for transgressions in the past all the way up the baseball food chain.
Mitchell's expressed belief that MLB should not punish people named in the report for past actions? Sound similar to Mark McGwire's "I'm not here to talk about the past, I'm here to focus on the positives in baseball" disaster in front of Congress? Probably not, because George Mitchell is a skilled politician and public speaker, used to saying a lot without saying much at all. Mark McGwire, on the other hand, is a lunkhead.
(Of course, Mitchell left the door open for punishing players if their actions were particularly offensive and therefore punishing them was, as the Commissioner would see fit, "in the best interests of baseball". More on this loophole in a second.)
So if we're not going to punish people based on the report, what's the point of naming names? If the idea is to catalog what happened merely as a way to develop plans moving forward, why are there 80 people who have been publicly linked to steroid and other substances, when referring to them as Player X would have served the same purpose?
Because the public and the media don't want that - we all want fresh meat. We've picked apart Barry Bonds' carcass to the point that all we have left is marrow. We're sick of talking about him, but who else could we publicly call a user and a cheat? A few journeymen and average players? Not good enough. The public needed a few new "faces" of the steroid era who could receive a show trial and be summarily hung out to dry.
And the proof: the meat of the report? Anyone looking for smoking guns should look elsewhere. There are some exceptions where there is pretty convincing, hard physical evidence linking someone to steroid purchases (it amazes me that athletes - or anyone - would purchase something illegal and shady with a check that has their name right on it. Can't they find a way to pull out cash from the bank? They might as well just put "For: HGH supplies" in the Memo section of the check.)
But for the big two - Clemens and Pettitte - as well as a majority of the players mentioned? A lot of hearsay and unsubstantiated testimony from witnesses/accusers with less-than-perfect reputations. In what should be a surprise to no one, Clemens' lawyer has already released a statement on behalf of his client, saying that Clemens:
...vehemently denies allegations in the Mitchell report that he used performance-enhancing steroids, and is outraged that his name is included in the report based on the uncorroborated allegations of a troubled man threatened with federal criminal prosecution.
And this is going to be the pattern you see time after time in the next few days: athlete expresses anger/sadness/disappointment that his name was released with this report based on baseless/unfounded/uncorroborated charges leveled by someone with a vendetta/a known criminal/a desperate former teammate facing a lifetime ban. And it will be hard to really argue, even if you know they are lying: most of these allegations wouldn't hold up in a criminal or civil court. Hell, the majority are so flimsy that a newspaper editor wouldn't run a story based just on them if the reporting was done by their writers.
But because "it's in The Mitchell Report", it's all going to be reported by every media outlet, with little context or additional reporting happening. The sad part is that there are nuggets of new information in the report, mainly about how team officials routinely either a) turned a blind eye or b) acknowledged steroid allegations or use when scouting players for potential trades. But interestingly, The Mitchell Report doesn't index each team or baseball front office executive is implicated in the report like it does for the players, so you probably won't be hearing as much about this.
(But, in order to drive home the point that Bud Selig - Mitchell's good friend and "boss" - was doing all he could to stop steroids and investigate wrong-doing despite the despotic and evil players union, the report does contain a letter the Union sent to its players urging them not to talk to the Mitchell Report committee without lawyers. Because the Union would rather direct it's workforce of minimally educated players talk with former Senators and investigators by themselves and "hope for the best!" Yeah, doesn't make sense to me, either.)
So what now? The Big Three - Clemens, Pettitte, Tejada - will be left out in stocks in the town square for the rest of the winter. If they survive, and the public has forgotten about them and moved on to some new sports scandal de jour, then Commissioner Selig will quietly let them go and heed the words of Senator Mitchell to let bygones be bygones. If the public is still baying for blood, however, then suddenly MLB will decide it's "in the best interest of baseball" to make examples of them by giving them lengthy suspensions/banning them from baseball/banning them from the Hall of Fame. Which would be insane, since the all-time HR king is currently awaiting a Federal trial on steroid related charges, with a mountain of evidence that's a lot more solid than what The Big Three have against them. And he's still going to play next season.
So I hope everyone enjoyed things today - the goofy "lists" being passed off as fact beforehand (again, Rich Garces wasn't a giveaway?), the build-up of the press conference followed by Senator NyQuil's insomnia-curing speech, the hours of post-announcement hand-wringing. At the end of the day, we're basically back where we started.
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