Mitchell Report: Baseball Failed To Make The Grade.

Before March 30th, 2006, when George Mitchell was appointed by MLB commish Bud Selig to "investigate" the use of illegal substances, mainly steroids, baseball was still America's favorite Past-time. Then it all went up shit's creek. Mitchell and his gang efficiently turned MLB and all the men that are/were involved into something we frown upon in children, whiney finger pointing tattle tales. Baseball had long been tainted even then by the abuse of steroids, players getting caught, players snitching, but Congress getting involved rubbed salt on the wound, 5 times a day. I couldn't stand watching it, but I had to because of the magnitude of things.. It was hard because some of the very players I had come to love were on that stand, some were already suspected of it, but it was a era that would soon be passed over, just like every other, with new and better testing policy for illegal substances with stricter rules in place. Nobody but Bud Selig asked congress and Mitchell in, not the MLBPA, nor did any of it's board members. Bud Selig, strong arming the feds on in. The Mitchell Report didn't do a damn thing for anyone except turn a bunch of dumb athletes into criminals and make Jose Canseco rich. Bottom line it should have never happened.

I understand that baseball was having a hard time controlling the issue's associated with controlling substances like steroids. They are lab made and hard to break down and detect, I get that. I just don't understand why posting a big hit list was the way to control it. The list came out, players still keep using and there is most assuredly nobody calling anyone out. Braun won some awards, and boom, positive for illegal substances. The testing works, the way they got to it, devastating. I say that because we'll never be able to for sure vote in any play of that generation without a hint of questioning in the back of the brain, is there any way he did it too? Did Edgar Martinez? Griffey Jr.? How about Jeff Bagwell? Or a pitcher like Pedro? Hell Moyer has thrown through and out of the era (apparently he's still coming back). It's hard to say anymore where these greats and many others will sit in baseball lore 100 years from now, but they all came from the same era as Canseco, Clemens, Bonds, McGwire, and Caminiti.

In 1997 and 1998, you couldn't find a hotter sport in the world than baseball. The catalyst? The home-run. Griffey, Sosa, Luis Gonzalez, and Mark McGwire gave us a show and a season to remember. It was all about the number 61, the record previously slugged by Roger Maris. Never had baseball captivated the nation like it did during this race, it was magical. I watched every night before bed to see where each man stood, all the way till McGwire took the crown at the end of the year, though Sosa won the MVP. No steroids, no cream, no clear, no bull. Just pure elation from the fans. And that is how I had always seen baseball prior to the Mitchell involvment. I know now players I had watched as a kid were very likely on roids', but hey we can all see that now. For one to really appreciate what steroids actually did for the game you have to remember where baseball was headed before the long ball beefed up. Between 1973 and 1995 there were 4, count em, 4 work stoppages DURING the regular season, costing the MLB 948 games. That's nearly a decade of baseball, gone. After 1995, when things really started popping, zero work stoppages due to labor issues. The game has become too important, too valuable. If you put that into just the TV revenue a team would lose by todays pay scale, that would be about, and this is rough at best, $14,226,000,000,000.00. How about that for solving some of the financial deficit our country has accrued.

Even when Barry Bonds was smashing home-runs into the bay, I was a fan. You couldn't help but be overtaken by the mammoth blasts. Splash City was splash crazy for a good decade there in San Fran. Now with 'The Freak', 'Kung-Fu Panda', and Brian Wilson's beard playing now, The Giants haven't been able to match near the success, as far as packing stands is concerned, to when Barry played, not even close. Why the illegal substance situation had to come down to a TV scripted intervention is beyond me. MLB and the players union stuck they're heads in the sand while writers and media from everywhere destroyed them. As smart as people are getting today, you'd think someone would have spoken up and said "Uh, guys, I'm not doing this.". I know said up-riser probably would have got cut loose and none would have followed, but a little courage would have been nice. Not more lies, not more from Clemens or A-Rod. Just a united front declaring blasphemy. Hind sight is 20-20, but there is no way you can justify ratting out your brothers, not from the start. For better or for worse, just like any place else in life, those guys were part of a team. It's a marriage that can build dynasties and destroy careers, some in the same breath (see Buckner).To take that away and make this a individual effort is insanity. Suddenly the I has been put back into team. It has put a cloud over the whole game that will stick around as long as I am able to watch games. I'm not condoning what the guys did, it is never right to cheat, but did they do anything worthy of a Salem style witch hunt? No way. All our wonderful congress members did was defile a wonderful game, placing a asterisk on the game forever, stamping doubt in the mind of every baseball fan across the world.