Do You Think Roger Clemens WIll Sign My Copy of the Mitchell Report?

The Mitchell Report was released today. For those of you who live in a vaccuum, an investigation has been ongoing for the last 20 months regarding the use of performance enhancing drugs by Major League Baseball players. The investigation was led by former U.S. Senator (Dem. Maine) George Mitchell.

The first thing that needs to be understood about the report, that some people are already missing, is that exclusion from Mitchell's report does not mean a player is clean. Period. That being said:

This report is an absolute travesty. I can't believe that any good can possibly come from Mitchell's report. Performance-enhancing drugs have been a major problem in Major League Baseball for years, and a problem that owners, GMs, managers and the commissioner have collectively turned a blind eye to until now. Great, we already knew that, but this witch hunt was the wrong approach for solving the problem. The real solution is working harder to eliminate performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. This is something the Commissioner's Office has failed miserably to do, and Mitchell's investigation was a way for Bud Selig to spread the blame. Most of the "facts" included in the report are mere hearsay. This was an investigation into a culture of cheating and lying in baseball, and now we're to believe everyone involved is suddenly telling the truth? Why, because they were "advised" that lying could constitute a criminal offense? Horseshit.

Then we have the issue of potential punishment of the players named. This, too, is ridiculous. In the absence of a positive test, leave them alone. It doesn't make any sense to punish them now. Baseball knew it was going on and looked the other way. We, as fans, suspected is was going on, but did anyone say anything when Sosa, McGwire, and Bonds were hitting 60 and 70 homeruns? No, because it was fun. We loved the way balls were flying out of the stadium. We loved the chase on Maris' record. Then we decided we didn't like Barry Bonds chasing the all-time homerun record because he isn't a likeable person, so we vilified him, and this is what we got for it. Punish them? I think we've all been punished enough. Drop it. Let it go. Let the past be the past, chalk it up to the way the times were, and just get it cleaned up.

The recommendations Mitchell makes at the end of the report are solid strategies that should have been implemented 15 years ago in an effort to control the use of illegal performance-enhancers in baseball. Instead, we've had this fiasco where we're digging up the past, and for no particularly helpful reason. Have anyone's questions been answered? Do we know who to believe anymore now than we did before the report? All this is going to lead to is a rift between the Players Association and ownership, and further lead to all players being guilty until proven innocent in regard to performance-enhancing drugs. This whole episode has been disgraceful and a huge black eye on a sport I've loved as a player, a coach, a student, a historian, and a fan almost my entire life.