Bracing for the Coming Storm
We’re a little over 24 hours away from the release of the Mitchell Report and it’s fair to say the baseball world is working itself into a frenzy. There are plenty of feelings about the Report swirling around in my head.
With the report in the NY Daily News that MLB officials now have the Report in hand and are reviewing it and that we’re likely to get 60-80 names, the first thought is trepidation
I didn’t really give much thought to the Report before today — I guess it took the eve of the release to make it seem real — but now I’m worried. Worried that David Ortiz or Alex Rodriguez or one of the other select stars who could really damage the game by being linked to PEDs will be named. But I’m especially worried that Big Papi will be named because he’s so dang likable and because if he’s linked it could tarnish everything that the Red Sox have accomplished in the last few seasons — accomplishments that I cherish as a fan.
As an advocate of baseball in a sports world that continuously turns to the No Fun League because it’s supposedly much better run and much more exciting, I’m dreading what it means.
There just isn’t a lot of good that can come of this. When the names are released, that will be the story, and let’s face it that’s all the MSM really cares about at this point. They don’t care about baseball, they care about their next indignant, irrational, completely oversimplified column or their next screaming point on Around the Horn. They don’t care about fixing the institution or the root causes of PED abuse or any of the stuff that’s truly important for the future of the sport. This isn’t a simple issue, not even close, but that’s the way the MSM has treated it since the bombshells contained in Game of Shadows became public.
There’s so much going on here. There’s so much blame to go around. If you’ve truly monitored this story closely you know that perception is so far skewed from reality it’s hard to take your average enraged beat writer seriously. Did you know, for example, that HGH might not even be a true performance-enhancer? Did you know that the ‘I didn’t know what supplement I was taking’ excuse that we all routinely scoff at might actually be true in some cases?
So I’m dreading the MSM coverage of this because I know the Mitchell Report will only fan the flames, only serve as another irrational talking point. And it will further the perception that baseball is the steroid sport — a reputation earned only because it was slow to react to the problem, not because it’s really any worse than football or any other sport.
Part of me is pitying the players who will be outed on Thursday. Sure they deserve it because, in theory at least, they cheated, but this Report won’t be even close to comprehensive. They’re essentially drawing the short straw of the steroid era while many of their own teammates will get off scot-free. We’re never going to know the names of every player that cheated so there’s a real sense of futility involved in this entire exercise.
And because of Howard Bryant’s piece today at ESPN, it’s abundantly clear to me that the investigation isn’t necessarily even about even-handedness, it’s about collecting as many big names as possible, no matter how specious each name’s particular connection to steroids is. It’s about pawning off responsibility on the players. And really it’s about staying out of Congress again, not appeasing the fans or working toward any long-term solutions.
During conversations with investigators, trainers were actually encouraged to speculate. SPECULATE. People’s reputations could be ruined just because an athletic trainer was coerced into guessing the identities of players they think might have taken steroids.
And that brings me to my final thought on the whole subject: disgust. No surprise here, but I’m disgusted with the way the commissioner’s office has handled this entire thing. George Mitchell, a senator from my own state, a man with great integrity who I looked up to as a kid, should never have taken this job in the first place. He’s too close to Bud Selig and too close to the Red Sox. The appearance of impropriety is just as bad as impropriety itself in this case. Mitchell will either be roundly criticized for not naming a major Red Sox player in the Report and doing his favorite team — a team he’s collected paychecks from — a favor. Or he could offer up a major Red Sox player as a sacrificial lamb based on speculation and hearsay. Either way it won’t be good for baseball.
It’s expected he won’t heavily criticize those at the highest levels of baseball in his Report and that’s just plain disingenuous. Everyone deserves blame. Bud Selig deserves blame. The owners deserve blame. It’s going to be a shame when if the GMs and trainers take the brunt of it, as ESPN’s Bryant speculates they will, just because they’ve got no powerful union or crony investigator shielding them. It’s going to be a shame that the players named will take the full force of the media explosion that’s coming just because of the bloodlust for names matters more than actually taking on this issue in an adult manner.
And that’s the heart of the matter. The MSM (and many fans) approach this issue like kids, maybe because it’s a child’s game anyway. Really, though, life doesn’t work like that. This is a complex issue with lots of moving parts, lots of questions and not enough answers — at least not enough of the right answers for the Jay Marriottis of the world because those answers aren’t clearcut, aren’t black and white, aren’t good vs. evil. The game of baseball is binary: strike or ball, out or not out. The steroid issue is far, far from it. We’re well into the gray here, it’s just no one whose voice counts seems to realize it.
Author’s Note: I should add as a baseball editor, this is likely to be my last post on the subject for a few days as I’ll be swamped in real work on the subject, so I’ll let Nick and Yigael handle most of the Mitchell Report stuff from here on out. If you want to join me for a chat on the subject on Thursday at AOL Sports, that’ll be the best place to get my .02 when the names are actually, mercifully and finally named.
Great post. Any investigation that relies heavily on athletic trainers is a little suspect, I’d say. I don’t think we should necessarily worry about the fact that Mitchell’s not adhering to a particularly high burden of proof; as a semi-internal investigation they’re not required to report findings that have rock-solid evidence to back them up, like a court would. But we should definitely take the results with a pinch of salt, especially if the source is a drugged up athletic trainer.
This, I think, is the key to the whole mess, from the Bryant article:
“The players’ refusal to be interviewed put Mitchell in the middle of the 40-year battle between the owners and the union. Sources said the players’ unwillingness to cooperate produced a crushing domino effect on the other groups targeted for interviews by investigators. Short on access and information, Mitchell’s investigators aggressively pressured team trainers, managers and strength coaches to speculate about players and their possible use of performance-enhancing drugs.”
The fact that the players themselves essentially boycotted the investigation forced Mitchell to seek alternative routes for information. Obviously they have no interest in indicting themselves or each other, but some basic cooperation from the Player’s Union could’ve made this process much more honest. In that sense, they get what’s coming to them: a kind of steroid turkey shoot.
I dunno. I think it was folly to think that players, especially active ones, would actually come forward. And I don’t blame them for not doing so. By picking Mitchell, essentially Selig’s crony, to run the investigation Selig made it virtually impossible to trust the investigation as a player.
Is the player’s union or any individual player supposed to believe they’ll get a fair shake in this entire Report when a guy who’s close to the commissioner and was a member of the ownership group of one of the highest profile franchises in the game is running the show? Absolutely not.
That’s the equivalent of George Bush picking his wife to do an ethical investigation on his administration. Would there be any doubt that Laura would make her husband come out smelling like roses (at least relatively speaking) compared to Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and all the random aides.
Yea, the players should absolutely take some blame for all this, but this investigation has been botched and compromised from the beginning and the only reason Mitchell even has as many names as he does is because he lucked out and the feds busted Radomski.
I’m not the biggest Selig hater in the world, but this investigation is the entire reason people don’t like him, because he comes off like the used car salesman he was.
Let’s be clear, it’s the players who took PEDS. Management and ownership and the commissioner and the media might have all looked the other way, but it was the players who actually stuck the needles in each other’s asses. They are the ones who broke the law/cheated and they deserve most of the blame whether they like it or not.
Regardless, I have a hard time believing George Mitchell is anyone’s “crony”, let alone Selig’s wife as your analogy suggests. He’s one of the most respected politicians of our lifetime; Bud Selig’s some twat from Milwaukee. Mitchell successfully brokered the Northern Ireland peace process for fuck’s sake; this shit is child’s play by comparison. Until we see the report we can’t know how he treats Selig et al or the Red Sox, but until tomorrow I’ll give our Maine homeboy the benefit of the doubt. I have to think Mitchell is more than capable of looking at the issue fairly (as fairly as possible with the players stone-walling him), regardless of the fact he’s on the Red Sox board or friend’s with Bud.