I suppose I'm obligated to weigh in on the Mitchell Report.
Here it is in all of its .PDF glory. Since it's hundreds of pages of bland "so-and-so received such-and-such from so-and-so", what I would do is read over the list of those mentioned in the report, then do a search within the .pdf file to find more information about your favorite cheater.
Honestly I am less than impressed with the report as a whole. Maybe I was expecting something harsher or more damning. Maybe I was expecting more big names. Maybe I was expecting clever and witty prose. Maybe I was expecting Joe Don Baker. But I suppose it is what it is: a concise history of performance-enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball, reasons why PEDs are bad, some obvious conclusions, some recommendations that the Commissioner and the Players Association may or may not pay attention to, and, most scandalously (and the only part of the report that people care about), details of former and current players' dealings with illegal substances.
Ah sweet, named names. This'll be like Christmas. The anticipation is killing me.
Not so much.
The names, as you peruse the list yourself, are a little bit disappointing and fall into two categories:
1) Unsurprising names. Clemens, Giambi (both of 'em!), Tejada, Sheffield, Juan Gonzalez. High-profile fellows, but a bit on the beefy side. And don't forget about Canseco and Bonds!
2) Desperate bottom-rung players. Athletes who've teetered between the Majors and Minors, who've made careers out of being back-ups, athletes who lack the physical abilities that would allow them to have a comfortable big league career, athletes who needed something to prevent them from falling into obscurity. Mike Bell, Gary Bennett, Larry Bigbie, Howie Clark, Cody McKay, some guy named Nook.
When I initially looked over the list of names it seemed like there were an awful lot of Toronto Blue Jay players. There was Howie Clark (probably most famous for being a part of that "Alex Rodriguez yelled in my ear" incident earlier in the 2007 season), Troy Glaus, Gregg Zaun... as well as former Jays like Clemens, Canseco, Benito Santiago, a couple others, etc. Fortunately for me Wikipedia has already organized the named names by team, and the Jays aren't anywhere near being the worst offenders. Nope, just like in everything else, the Yankees need to be the biggest and best in every single category. Twenty-three former and current Yankees have been cited in the report. But just in case you were thinking that artificially enhanced athletes make for more championship teams, in come the Orioles with eighteen current and former offenders.
In fact, just from looking at this list you could probably throw out the notion that using PEDs correlates with success. If you could somehow quantify overall baseball ability, plot it on the y-axis, and then make the x-axis the number of fluid ounces of HGH injected into the bum, your plotted points would look pretty scattershot. PEDs do not make you a superstar. Now as to whether or not they enhance your own personal ability, I don't know. It's like with corked bats; everybody perceives and assumes that a corked bat will make you a better hitter, but there's not enough scientific evidence to support this.
Some players, most notibly Andy Pettitte and Rick Ankiel, claimed that they only used HGH to recover from injury. This seemed okay with me (especially since this was before HGH was specifically banned in baseball) until I realized that 1) HGH use isn't a ligitimate means of injury recovery, especially when 2) it's obtained through shadey doctors and iffy clinics. It's illegal, actually, for doctors and clinics to distribute HGH to athletes for injury recovery or to bulk up or things like that. I don't know if it's outright illegal for a person to possess HGH, but you're sure not allowed to pass it out for these purposes.
HGH is approved for those with short bowel syndrome. If I were an athlete caught with the stuff, I'd be claiming short bowels.
Anyway, does the Mitchell Report destroy baseball? No, not hardly. This is less an urgent crises than it is a tumor that's been allowed to grow for too long. It's a shame that Major League Baseball only within the past couple years is trying to remove it. The Report is kind of like a spade used to dig it out. Painful, yes, but everybody knew it was coming.
And besides, organized baseball has been around since the Civil War and has withstood many a dour day. The Black Sox of 1919, the Pittsburgh drug trials of 1985, the strikes of 1981 and 1994... baseball has always survived and the fans have always returned.
Here it is in all of its .PDF glory. Since it's hundreds of pages of bland "so-and-so received such-and-such from so-and-so", what I would do is read over the list of those mentioned in the report, then do a search within the .pdf file to find more information about your favorite cheater.
Honestly I am less than impressed with the report as a whole. Maybe I was expecting something harsher or more damning. Maybe I was expecting more big names. Maybe I was expecting clever and witty prose. Maybe I was expecting Joe Don Baker. But I suppose it is what it is: a concise history of performance-enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball, reasons why PEDs are bad, some obvious conclusions, some recommendations that the Commissioner and the Players Association may or may not pay attention to, and, most scandalously (and the only part of the report that people care about), details of former and current players' dealings with illegal substances.Ah sweet, named names. This'll be like Christmas. The anticipation is killing me.
Not so much.
The names, as you peruse the list yourself, are a little bit disappointing and fall into two categories:
1) Unsurprising names. Clemens, Giambi (both of 'em!), Tejada, Sheffield, Juan Gonzalez. High-profile fellows, but a bit on the beefy side. And don't forget about Canseco and Bonds!
2) Desperate bottom-rung players. Athletes who've teetered between the Majors and Minors, who've made careers out of being back-ups, athletes who lack the physical abilities that would allow them to have a comfortable big league career, athletes who needed something to prevent them from falling into obscurity. Mike Bell, Gary Bennett, Larry Bigbie, Howie Clark, Cody McKay, some guy named Nook.
When I initially looked over the list of names it seemed like there were an awful lot of Toronto Blue Jay players. There was Howie Clark (probably most famous for being a part of that "Alex Rodriguez yelled in my ear" incident earlier in the 2007 season), Troy Glaus, Gregg Zaun... as well as former Jays like Clemens, Canseco, Benito Santiago, a couple others, etc. Fortunately for me Wikipedia has already organized the named names by team, and the Jays aren't anywhere near being the worst offenders. Nope, just like in everything else, the Yankees need to be the biggest and best in every single category. Twenty-three former and current Yankees have been cited in the report. But just in case you were thinking that artificially enhanced athletes make for more championship teams, in come the Orioles with eighteen current and former offenders.
In fact, just from looking at this list you could probably throw out the notion that using PEDs correlates with success. If you could somehow quantify overall baseball ability, plot it on the y-axis, and then make the x-axis the number of fluid ounces of HGH injected into the bum, your plotted points would look pretty scattershot. PEDs do not make you a superstar. Now as to whether or not they enhance your own personal ability, I don't know. It's like with corked bats; everybody perceives and assumes that a corked bat will make you a better hitter, but there's not enough scientific evidence to support this.
Some players, most notibly Andy Pettitte and Rick Ankiel, claimed that they only used HGH to recover from injury. This seemed okay with me (especially since this was before HGH was specifically banned in baseball) until I realized that 1) HGH use isn't a ligitimate means of injury recovery, especially when 2) it's obtained through shadey doctors and iffy clinics. It's illegal, actually, for doctors and clinics to distribute HGH to athletes for injury recovery or to bulk up or things like that. I don't know if it's outright illegal for a person to possess HGH, but you're sure not allowed to pass it out for these purposes.
HGH is approved for those with short bowel syndrome. If I were an athlete caught with the stuff, I'd be claiming short bowels.
Anyway, does the Mitchell Report destroy baseball? No, not hardly. This is less an urgent crises than it is a tumor that's been allowed to grow for too long. It's a shame that Major League Baseball only within the past couple years is trying to remove it. The Report is kind of like a spade used to dig it out. Painful, yes, but everybody knew it was coming.
And besides, organized baseball has been around since the Civil War and has withstood many a dour day. The Black Sox of 1919, the Pittsburgh drug trials of 1985, the strikes of 1981 and 1994... baseball has always survived and the fans have always returned.
