The Mitchell Report: The Aftermath

In all honestly there isn’t much to be said about the Mitchell Report on performance-enchancing drugs in baseball that hasn’t been said already. There has obviously been a major problem in the sport and a complete failure by the game’s caretakers to police it.

Nobody’s innocent – not the owners who made millions off increased attendance, not the players (users and non-users alike) who cashed in on the revenues with inflated contracts, and not the fans who naively spent their money to gawk at musclebound monsters that shattered home run records or, like in the case of mega-fraud Roger Clemens, strike batters out with ease. They all worked together to make this day a possibility, and now the entire baseball world is paying the price.

As far is Clemens is concerned, roid rage is a much better explanation for hurling a shattered bat at Mike Piazza than, say, mistaking it for the ball. I’m not the least bit surprised by him or many of the names on the list. Unlike Barry Bonds, he’ll have had the good fortune to have (more than likely now) retired before the world caught wind of his misdeeds, and it is unfortunate. I would’ve like to see what kind of vitriol this disgrace would’ve been shown in comparison to Bonds. Clemens joins several one-time Yankees teammates on Mitchell’s report, including Andy Pettitte, Chuck Knoblauch, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Mike Stanton and Jason Grimsley.

The Mets, it appears, were the less juiced up of the 2000 Subway Series participants. I was crossing my fingers Mike Piazza wouldn’t be in the Mitchell report, and he wasn’t. The most prominent recent Met to be on it was Paul Lo Duca, who apparently saw the effects wear off after 2001 because he never approached his home run or slugging percentage totals from that year again (25 and .543, respectively). Todd Hundley, who preceded Piazza as the Mets catcher and was the first baseball player I actively followed, was unfortunately but unsurprisingly cited as well. Even Todd Pratt is named on it – if the list was the authority (and I’m completely sure it isn’t) we would be led to believe Mike Piazza was in fact the only “clean” Mets starting catcher since the early 1990’s. Other former Mets on the list include Lenny Dykstra, Matt Franco, Mo Vaughn (insert steroids-in-food joke here) and Carl Everett. Everett apparently doesn’t believe in dinosaurs but does believe in putting needles in his butt.

I’m actually somewhat surprised there weren’t more big names on the list of players linked to the drugs, all things considered. Unfortunately, you can’t assume anyone’s totally clean, and the report itself without a doubt does not include all offenders. This mess has stained the reputation of an entire generation of professional baseball players. They have their union and their sense of invincibility to thank for that.

You can see the entire report here and a list of players involved here. There has been some humorous commentary on the matter on Fire Joe Morgan, as well. I’m really not sure whether this is the beginning of a new era for baseball or just the start of a long parade of skeletons coming out of the closet for the entire sport. My guess is that it will probably be the latter, but for better or for worse as a fan of the game I’m going to have to deal with it.

To wrap up my thoughts, I wanted to point out that while baseball has an ugly tale to tell now, it should not have required any federal interference for this to be taken care of. Curiously, the National Football League has gotten what amounts to a free pass from the same people holding Major League Baseball to the fire, and if you really want skeletons to come out of the closet I’m fairly sure the NFL has plenty of those itself.