Mitchell Report
Soon the results of baseball’s oft-halting, sometimes stymied, pearls-clutching investigation into how in the world those steroids got into the game will be announced. It supposedly includes some eighty names, and will probably include past Mariners. Possibly present Mariners, who knows. If advance leaks are to be believed, it credits MLB with trying to impose testing without noting how baseball squandered previous opportunities to implement a program with receptive players, or the circumstances that led to the union being so adversarial.
After which, Selig has his own conference, in which he’ll say “we appreciate these findings and all the hard work, so on and so forth, and we’ll do what we can.”
Most of the advance recommendations of the report I’ve seen are quite good, and baseball would be well-served to implement them — though I’ll wait on talking about the pros and cons at length until we see them. And, despite my reservations about the whole exercise, I’m pleased that those recommendations are reasonable, and don’t involve, say, torturing randomly-selected players until they finger others before banning them for life.
Inevitably, though, the story today’s going to be names, which is unfortunate. Still, I hope after the initial hysteria, there’s progress made.
OK, now THAT is what I was asking for (and thank you!). That articles details how, why, where steroids could help and estimates (and in a way where we can see where the fiddle marks are) what the effects were.
So I’m a little curious now. Back a decade or so when offensive numbers were starting to take off one of the explanations mentioned was the “juiced ball.†Were a lot of people in the know back then and the “juiced ball†was really just a euphemism for “juiced players?â€
Derek had a pretty good take on this over at his Cheater’s Guide site:
He also notes, via comments from Bobby Valentine, that at least some smart people in the game didn’t immediately realize what was going on.
Any Tom Toles fans? Here’s his take.
http://www.gocomics.com/tomtoles/2007/12/14/
Fehr seemed almost pissed and under pressure at the same time…
Yeah, I’d guess that Fehr is pretty P.O’d and that the way this was handled will really complicate the process of actually solving the problem. The Player’s Union is the key – they have to sign on to any real testing program and punishment schedule. If I were representing the player’s (and realized something was inevitable given the scrutiny), I would want to negotiate for three main things: amnesty, confidentiality, and a combination due process/benefit of the doubt.
Amnesty – what happened years ago happened years ago, and lots of people are responsible, so nothing good would come from punishing guys who juiced years ago.
Confidentiality – No one should have his name officially associated with PEDs except when absolutely necessary. E.g., if he tests positive, appeals and wins the appeal, no one ever knows (call this the Travis Henry rule if you want). The only time the public hears someone’s name is when they have exhausted the appeals process and begin their suspension/penalty, etc. Otherwise, it’s treated like medical information and treated like HIPPA.
Due process/benefit of the doubt – hearsay, speculation and one-off test results are not sufficient to punish a player.
This report spectacularly violates every single one of those points. Okay, enough. I’m all done bagging on Mitchell and Selig and this stupid fiasco.
well, good, because the Pres sez we should just put the steeroideera behind us.
Can we start another topic to talk about the Haren trade? I’m all steeroided out at the moment, and would like to put this topic behind me.