My Mitchell Report Rant: Part 1

  What are we to learn from the Mitchell report? This report that some have said shakes the whole foundation of the world? This Scarlet “S” that now hangs upon every player named. Especially Roger Clemens, shining bright and accusing for all to see. Innocent until proven guilty may work well in court but it certainly doesn’t apply in the court of public opinion. FoxSports is calling for Roger’s castration and flagellation. Some fans and reporters say this report changes everything. Mark Kreigel says that Clemens is a bully and can’t stand the heat.

Jason Whitlock causes me to vomit a little in my mouth every time I read whatever he has to write on the subject. For him, this is an issue of race. Anyone who would be willing to say that the majority of the Mitchell Report is hearsay must be a Southern Flag toting, red neck racist who hates blacks and wants to see the restoration of the Confederate States of America. Never mind that some of these same people also were also critics of Mr. Corn-Fed McGwire.  Bringing race into an already emotionally charged situation is senseless and borders on irresponsible. To be fair, I can no longer find the article that originally made me want to puke and there are many things that Whitlock says that I agree with.

    Really, is this the best we can do? Is this the best that Bud Selig and MLB can do after two years and all that money? I’ve never hid my disdain for this whole report. I think it was beyond stupid for MLB to use a person who is employed by the Boston Red Sox.

    But there are some real questions to be raised, that are not. Over half of the players mentioned in the report were never that good. Why not? How did PED’s help them? Are they aberrations that we are to ignore?  Why didn’t they get a boost? Maybe they were snookered and bought the equivalent of a sugar pill version of HGH?

I’m not going to get into the reasons that players may or may not have used PED’s. today. I am going to ask a few questions. First of all, what is an innocent player supposed to do?

    The brilliant mind that is Ken Rosenthal says, “File a lawsuit or shut up” If they file a lawsuit and lose does that mean they are guilty or does it mean simply that they lost a law suit? What’s their exposure if they lose the suit?

    Simply denying it isn’t enough anymore? You have to prove your innocence but how does a person do that? How do you prove a negative? How do you prove something didn’t happen?  In short every player in that report is stuck if they do and they are stuck if they do not.

    Herein lies my greatest problem with this report. What’s the point of the report? Bud sanctimoniously told us that he feels obligated to dole out punishment. For what? How will that work? Will he have to be able to prove the allegations. What about those that prove to be true (either by admission or evidence) but happened when PED’s weren’t illegal? One cannot use the argument that it was illegal in the game because it was illegal in the country here either unless the players are tried and proven guilty in a court of law by a jury of their peers. How do you punish someone for doing something that wasn’t against the rules?  I think you might see a few law suits then.

Surely, I am not the only person who thinks all of the posturing around this report seems like just that: posturing. Everybody is trying to make themselves look good, ignoring their own culpability in this whole sordid affair. Bud’s a hypocrite and so are the sports reporters. The sports reporters may actually have been more complicit than the Commissioner. I’ll get into that in my next post.