Letters to the Editor
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And the fans...
If I'm representative, couldn't care less. Or maybe I could care less. In either case, I don't care.
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Mitchell Report
What did it accomplish?
I think it will be remembered as the definitive end of the steroid era. A tying up of loose strings. The report's biggest and least conspicuous accomplishment is showing how widespread steroid use (and later HGH use) was during a fairly long stretch of baseball history. All teams, all positions. The most popular players and relatively unheard of players.
Am I the only one who assumed that there was steroid testing all along? The guys were too big to believe, so it just made sense that they would test them. Guess that was naive.
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Blame
Unfortunately, NPR interviewed the COO of baseball this morning and he placed the blame squarely on the Player's Union. The interviewer neither challenged this point nor had on someone from the uion to refute it.
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There have to be serious consequences
But not for the reasons often bandied about by old gasbags who miss the days when 61 was a sacred number.
Anyone named in this report who holds or has held a record or an individual achievement (like a Cy Young or MVP) needs to have that taken away from them.
This isn't because we don't want to go back to honoring Roger Maris or Hank Aaron as some sort of holy figures, but because we want the kids today who are using steroids to understand that there are actual real, permanent consequences to getting caught using this stuff.
In other words, it's not about restoring a fabled past, it's about protecting the future.
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Big whoop
The Mitchell Report gives me the impression of a high school newspaper expose. It stinks of amateur rumor and narrow minded focus. So they backed a few people into a corner and water boarded them into giving out a few names. Who in their right mind thinks that the guys named are the anywhere near the whole iceberg? And there is no clear evidence that would hold up in any court.
Listening to talk radio, it seems that many people see no difference in taking these performance enhancing drugs and shooting heroin. I hate to defend some of these wealthy well compensated athletes, but didn't most of them take these "illegal drugs" because playing their sport damaged their bodies? I don't think one of them thought they were taking a magic pill that would make them wake up one day to be a super athlete. I know the dangers of misuse of steroids, but it looks like Major League Baseball was giving out mixed signals to these guys.
Most of all, I don't like the Red Sox tainted Mitchell heading this report. Doesn't it seem too convenient that the only name leaked during the World Series was Paul Byrd, who would be facing the Sox the next week?
Major League Baseball should read the report, apologize for being self serving hypocrites, promise to do better and move on.
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For the Ireland reference alone, George Mitchell can get bent with the lot of 'em
Just for the "Remember when I sat around a table in Northern Ireland with a bunch of other folks and they decided maybe it was in a shared interest to stop killing each other?" reminder in the report. How pathetic.
Really. When baseball owners actually begin firebombing the offices of the Players Union, I guess then it will be an apt analogy. (Although not to put too fine a point on it I think Ireland's worst day was better than Iraq's best.)
George Mitchell ain't done shit since he left the Senate, and it's debatable whether he accomplished much there apart from posing as the classic "Statesman" (read: "moderate" Dem who lets the Republicans get everything they want, but who might occasionally offer a speech on the floor otherwise). So he eschews the Senate because he really really liked baseball more, and really, what is more important in life than being a third tier cog in mgmt side in baseball? But he didn't get the Commish job he so coveted. Could he have been better than Selig? Of course, but as King notes that ain't exactly saying much. So they trot him out for this escapade because this one-time-reportedly-noble-man narrative offered up to the press would be especially useful for mgmt's latest "what? what WHAT? there were steroids?" trope.
So ignore the conflicts, ignore the most important point -- as KK notes, it wouldn't (OK, in this day and age SHOULDN'T) get past an editor or judge -- and rush to the barricades, oh ye of Sports Illustrated and ESPN acolytes! Shocked, SHOCKED you are to hear of Mr. Clemens!...yadda yadda steaming piles of bullshit. Mr. Mitchell: if you didn't want the report to reduce to a "Clemens was on the juice! Nya nya!" or "Really? No major Red Sox?", you should've worked with, and not with ownership against, labor. Which brings me right back to where I was before I tried slogging through this beast report, which is undergrad-level but undoubtedly paid tens of thousand law firm hours to create:
Baseball: Screw Everyone Involved. Wake me when its relevant again.
And is it possible that a King Kaufman reader preceding me actually trotted out the "Won't somebody think of the children?" line? Holy cow. Fuck your children. If you can't raise them to know the difference between "Hey, David Segui just hit the ball, sweet" and "maybe David Segui just put a needle between his toes to get that hit, and I should too" then up yours. Where might all these "kids" on the juice get the cash to procure it?
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Same Ol Same Ol
I can't believe King would expect any great leadership from Bud Selig. Why should he be any different from any of our other leaders? All we get are lies, deceit, and self-serving behavior from anyone at the top. This is true for Corporate CEOs, politicians, School Board Administrators, Clergy, etc.
I'm convinced that the only people who "succeed" are the ones who lie, cheat, and steal their way to the top. Why should Bud Selig be any different?
Everyone's focus is way too short sighted these days. Even if we were to find a leader with a long-term solution, could we wait it out. Change takes time and patience.....two things we have precious little of these days.