So What The F*CK Was That Worth? I a small glimpse at the Mitchell Report

It always amazes me how quickly people are willing to simply accept a mountain of shit someone else is willing to pile on top of them.

Take, for instance, the Mitchell Report, which not only led the sports news for the last week but was the lead story on the national news outlets on Thursday when it became available.

The Mitchell Reports is nearly two years in the making. At its head was a man who once brokered peace in Northern Ireland (something former Senator George Mitchell seems only too willing to remind everyone of any chance he gets) and a litany of high priced invesitgators and lawyers. The report cost, reportedly $20 million or more to complete. And, for all of that, what, exactly did we get?

We got shit, that's what we got. We got an embarrassment. George Mitchell should keep reminding us that he brokered peace in Northern Ireland because, looking at this report, it would be hard to believe he brokered peace between his older and younger daughters. I have never seen a more useless, more trivial, bigger waste of time, money, energy ever, in any venue. The Mitchell Report must go down in history as the worst example of invesitgation in recent memory.

First, let's look at what everyone wanted to see: the list. I don't care who you are or what your personal views are about the steroids era, everyone wanted to see whose names were on that list. EVERYONE. So, what did we get? There was not ONE name on that list, save perhaps Paul LoDuca, that none of us haven't heard before. Every single name on the list had been implicated previously. Every name on that list had been "found" by some other invesitgative body, whether that was the federal government or state officials. So, after 2 years and $20 million, George Mitchell and his invesitgators essentially just lifted his report from other sources.

Think of it in terms of school. Let's say someone asked you to put together a list of the most important battles of the Civil War and then give a detailed account of why they were so significant. Imagine you were given the entire year to do the report. Can you imagine the SIZE of the F you would find on your paper if, at the end of that time, you had simply copied the list of battles from two books and included THEIR explanation of why they were important? Can you imagine what your teacher/professor would say if you presented something that was COMPLETELY unoriginal, with not one imaginative or unique thought of you own included?

That's exactly what Mitchell just gave us. The most expensive plagarized book report ever. NONE of the information he gave in the report is new. There is nothing we already didn't know.

Now, let's look at this from the standpoint of what it tells us about the beginning of the steroid era in baseball, how it came about, how it was cultivated, how this "culture of drug use" came to being, and who the major players were. Well, I wish we could look at that aspect of the report, unfortunately it doesn't tell us ANYTHING about that. It is further evidence of how useless this report truly is. You would think that, even if the Mitchell Report was unable to put together an accurate, all encompassing list of players who used during the era, it would at least be able to shed some light on the era itself. Instead, it gives us a history of steriods in general, a history of drug use and durg use regulations in baseball, and some of the medical reprecussions of steroid use in baseball. Never, not once, does it shed light on how steroids in baseball got started (where did it originate, who were the major suppliers, who were the major users in the early years). We know NOTHING about how such a "culture" was created in baseball. We only know it existed.

Again, for a history analogy, it is like discussin World War II, and starting your discussion in 1944, only stating that "political actions taken before hand led to the war." Wow, that would really be glossing over a lot of information, wouldn't it? The same things here. Mitchell tells us that baseball created a culture of steroid use, and cultivated an atmosphere where it was accepted, but never once explains how or why that happened.

Buster Olney of ESPN.com, who has been critical of the report from the beginning, had the best take on the report I have seen yet, and he makes this point very eloquently when speaking about what the report failed to do (which is provide any important information whatsoever). Instead of some critical insight, we get cancelled checks and detailed accounts of how someone sent a text message to a clubbie trying to acquire some steroids, or how many times Roger Clemens was injected with HGH, or who approached whom about HGH use. That's all fine and good if one is trying to build a case against one individual. But when you are charged with creating a narrative on how steroid use permeated the baseball landscape and how it was allowed to grow under the noses of all involved without ever being detected or dealt with, tracing a paper trail for athletes who purchased the drugs is worthless. I don't need a detailed account of HOW Paul LoDuca got his steroids. I assumed they didn't just magical appear when he thought of them, or that a genie provided them when he wished it. Whether he was purchasing through a clubbie, through some scam dentist or health center in Puerto Rico, or whether he was purchasing them on some Website called HGH Plus, I assumed he took some sort of active role is acquiring his own drugs. How does that help my understanding of the steroid era?

Now, the question, in my mind, becomes "why is this report so incomplete and so narrow in its focus?" A lot of people have suggested that it would be foolish to think that Mitchell, who is on the board of directors for the Red Sox and a personal friend of Bud Selig, would ever overlook pertinent, important information because of those ties. By God, they remind us all, this man brokered peace in Northern Ireland (I don't know if you knew this or not. I did a little digging and it turns out to be somewhat true. Mitchell should really mention that part of his resume more, don't you think?). How could HE ever be swayed but such petty considerations?

I am not the man nor do I have access to his head. All I know is this. This report is light in two very important areas; its examination of the Commissioner's office and baseball's role in allowing this "culture" to exist, and any examination of steroid use outside of the predominently New York based steroid ring he had access to.

Let me take the second part first. I do believe that the players silence was a major impediment to Mitchell. It is clear that his inability to get players to go on record all but destroyed his ability to put a real report together. Yet, many people are willing to give Mitchell a pass because of this. "What did you want him to do" they say, "no one would talk to him." Well, first off, the question is, what the hell did the old man expect? Yeah, come on in as we ask you hard, incriminating questions that could be held against you in a court of law, and even if you deny the charges, since most of the accusations are first hand accounts of what happened not backed by any hard evidence, your name is still going to go on my list. Shocking no one wanted to talk to him.

Olney has a wonderful anticdote on how a couple of players were named by Radomski and were approached about the accusation. They denied the accusation. Yet, their names appeared in the report anyway. Matt Franco, who was named, is the perfect example of that. So, when we say that Mitchell's investigation was stymied by the players refusal to meet with him, where is the proof? As with much of the actual report, proof is hard to come by.

Second, where does it say that an investigation can only be successful if the people you suspect of doing wrong are willing to talk with you, or their friends are willing to give them up? That's really what Mitchell was expecting? He was truly counting on players lining up to give HIM a detailed account of how everything happened? Why would we need an investigator if that were the case? Isn't an investigation designed to uncover information that is hard to come by, or even hidden from public view? Isn't it suppose to DO the work, not rely on other people to fill in the blanks?

This isn't just obvious when looking at the lack of cooperation from the players. Mitchell would have had NO report without Radomski. Why didn't Mitchell and his investigators flush out a few more Radomskis to talk to, or at least to finger in the report? Wouldn't the report be more credible if he included the steroid dealings of a few more spots other than New York? One would think that Kirk Radomski, a clubbie for the Mets in the late 90's, invented steroids, yet we know players were using all the way back in the late 80's. The $20 million gang couldn't uncover ONE other supplier?

Mitchell expects us to simply gloss over his inefficient and sloppy investigating by admitting what we already know; Mitchell hasn't given a complete picture of what happened. It is as if Mitchell expects us to give him a pardon because he admits the investigation was harder than we thought. But, if you've taken a $20 million pay day, the investigation should have continued until a REAL report could be filed.

And in filing this report, Mitchell convientely slaps the hand of MLB officials and the Commish office, but seemingly stays away from laying any real blame at their feet. So, from the late 80's until now, a culture of steroid use was allowed to exist in baseball, but we have no evidence that Bud Selig of ANYONE else in MLB had a hand in allowing that to happen? None?

Newspaper accounts of the last several years have more details about this than the Mitchell Report. No where in the report does it address the fact that Selig has stated in the past that he didn't know steroids was a problem in baseball until after the 1998 season, yet there are records indicating Selig was talking to MLB officials about steroid use in baseball years before. Did Mitchell not know or see this? Did he investigate those claims and deem them unfounded? We have no idea because it isn't addressed.

How about the fact that it took Selig and baseball until 2006 to institute a REAL drug test? Were there meetings, dealings, back room discussions between and owners and the players discussing this matter? We have no idea reading the Mitchell report. We simply have the senator's assertion that ALL of baseball is to blame. I could have made a simliar claim two years ago without the benefit of a multimillion dollar investigation.

So why is the Commish office not taken to task, and why were so few "suppliers" investigated?

There are two possibilities. The first is that Mitchell simply didn't possess the skill to do a better job. Negotiating peace in Northern Ireland doesn't necessarily mean you are the best person to investigate an entire era of baseball and put it into context. In fact, a more legitimate option would have been to hand the money and the man power over to a biographer or documentary maker, who is used to researching complex, wide ranging issues and trying to put them into broad context. Mitchell approached this as a prosecutor and a politician, two things the report did not need. While the list of names was the hook, the meat of the report, the important legacy of the report was to be shedding a light on a 15 or 20 year period where steriods went from rare to common in what seemed like a blink of an eye.

Mitchell built a case against players named in the report, at time providing devastating evidence, at other times providing flimsy evidence that doesn't even pass the smell test (Brian Roberts is in the report because he TOLD someone he injected himself with steroids? How can a former prosecutor sleep at night knowing he has smeared someone's name forever off evidence like that?). But the "how" of one particular player getting steroids was simply useless in this situation. As said before, this wasn't a "case" against a player, this was an overview, or was suppose to be an overview, a history if you will, of what happened and how it happened.

As a politician, Mitchell understood that he needed something sensational to blind everyone to the flimsy job he had done, so he focused much of his attention on Roger Clemens. Clemens use is a MAJOR part of the Mitchell report. Why? He is one player? How does knowing Clemens used help us better understand steroid use in baseball? It doesn't, but without Clemens name, Mitchell simply has retred names and Andy Pettite, who seems to be guilty of using HGH twice when his elbow was about to fall off. Add Clemens to the mix, Mitchell knew, and no one will ask "how come you didn't do any digging of your own senator?"

The second reason Mitchell might not have looked harder at those two questions is because he didn't want to get any muddier than he already was.

Mitchell and Selig are friends. Sorry if I am a little skeptical that Selig and his cronies are barely mentioned as having a hand in this era of steriod use. They didn't know what was going on? They were incapable of stopping it when they found out? They had no dubious intentions in letting it continue? Money, and the resurrection of the sport didn't play a factor in MLB looking the other way for years? There's no evidence that they did look away?

Mitchell didn't include those tidbits because he didn't find any evidence to support those claims. However, he didn't find evidence because he didn't look for it. If I don't want my girlfriend to leave I'll tell her I couldn't find her keys. Of course, if I never look for the keys in the first place, I'm not technically lying, am I? I didn't find the keys. The fact that I didn't look for them doesn't need to be mentioned.

Only the most naive of us all would believe that Selig didn't know what was happening in his sport for years, and chose to look away. But Mitchell didn't talk about that in his report, either because he is incompetent or perfectly willing NOT to find that evidence; evidence that would certainly damage his friend's legacy and perhaps put his job in jeopardy.

The same applies to the list of players. Aside from Clemens, there are no surprising names on the list. Most of them are from New York. Did Mitchell really want to turn every stone over, especially in Boston, and find that a few current players on the Red Sox have been taking some Canseco bathroom breaks? Did he purposely set out to attack New York players, or hide information on current Red Sox players that may be juicing? I'm sure he didn't. Instead, I'm sure he was perfectly content to produce a thin list that doesn't implicate any major names currently in baseball and doesn't tarnish the team he works for. Could he have done a little more digging? I'm sure he could have. In fact, what kind of investigator would he be if THIS is all he could legitimately come up with? But Mitchell chose to produce a list, and a report, he could have put together a year and a half ago, just by simply cutting and pasting newspaper reports and including the information he was given by federal investigators. I have to believe it was what he preferred to do.

Roger Clemens has never been a likeable guy his possible use of steroids has been rumored for years. The other players on the list seem to be just as guilty, and it is hard to focus on anything other than the 80 or so named players who cheated the game of baseball. I have no sympathy for any of them (except, perhaps, the players who were named on such flimsy evidence as to make the most skeptical of us all wonder outloud what Mitchell was doing). This isn't about defending the players or defending steriod use. Those who bought from Radomski and used over a period of years deserve whatever they get as a result of this disclosure.

But that doesn't negate the fact that the Mitchell report has done nothing but provide the names of suspected steriod users who essentially bought from one supplier. It hasn't "caught" the vast majority of those who cheated the game and, in fact, may have let many of them off the hook because no other investigation of this magnitude will be launched. If you never crossed paths with Kirk Radomski, you can feel safe that your past steriod use will probably remain a secret for many, many years to come.

We don't know why steriod infiltrated baseball, or when it truly began, nor do we know why the major players in baseball (Bud Selig, Don Fehr) allowed it to fester for as long as it did. There are no substanative questions answered by the Mitchell report, and the names we received, for the most part, are old and outdated. This was, in many ways, a plagarized report, and for that Mitchell has been congratulated for his efforts. Instead, the Mitchell Report should be viewed as another example of baseball dropping the ball on this issue and should hold less water in the eyes of baseball fans across America than the next Jose Canseco tell-all should.

George Mitchell may have secured peace in Northern Ireland, but he certainly seemed off his game on this one.