The Mitchell Report – Comment and Analysis 2

I’m finally getting around to finishing this post after some delay (while watching Monday Night Football: Go Vikes!). After reading the majority of the Mitchell Report for myself (I only read around half of the player information at the end of the report), my overall conclusion is that the report only puts substance behind what every fan/commentator/player already knew: Major League Baseball has not been tough against Steroids. But before concluding I guess we should start with the reasons that Bud Selig asked to have this report compiled. The reasons Mitchell states he was asked to issue this report are:

1. Human Growth Hormone (HGH) and Steroids are very dangerous and pose health risks to the people who use them.
2. Players using these illegal drugs influence younger amateur athletes to use the same substances.
3. These illegal substances pose a threat to the integrity of the game of baseball.
4. Finally, it is unfair to let some players break the rules of the sport at the expense of honest players (Mitchell Report 4-5).

Whatever the reasons for the report, here are highlights from the rest of the report that lead me to my conclusions:

• There is no table of contents. Definitely the biggest short coming of the report. You really have to flip through the report in order to find anything.
• There is a discussion in the report covering the various health problems that steroids and HGH cause, but there is also a discussion about the supposed benefits of each. Everyone knows the benefits of steroids; what was interesting was the contention that HGH doesn’t really build muscle like steroids does. In fact the reports states that HGH doesn’t really help at all in training except for recovering from injuries. So why are players cheating to use it? Perhaps this is why you hear of players who were hurt, (see Andy Pettitte) how are accused of using HGH.
• On page twelve, Mitchell quotes former Commissioner Bart Giamatti:
  • “…acts of cheating are intended to alter the very conditions of play to favor one person. They are secretive, covert acts that strike at and seek to undermine the basic foundation of any contest declaring the winner — that all participants play under identical rules and conditions. Acts of cheating destroy that necessary foundation and thus strike at the essence of a contest. They destroy faith in the games’ integrity and fairness; if participants and spectators alike cannot assume the integrity and fairness, and proceed from there, the contest cannot in its essence exist.”

  What a great description of what cheating does to a sport. Mitchell goes on to point out that using prohibited substances fill all the requirements of that quotation.

• There is a long history of legislative and legal history describing when and how steroids and like substances became illegal.
• There is a long history of the attempts that the MLB tried to institute a drug policy against all of its employees (players, manager, and all other MLB employees). The first policies were against cocaine and other drugs of that sort, but eventually included steroids, HGH and more recently Greenies.
• There is also a very long discussion about the BALCO case and descriptions of named players and the descriptions of their alleged cheating.
• The report ends with a number of recommendations that Mitchell made to the MLB.

Because this post has gotten longer than I thought it would, I’m going to end it here and save the recommendations and my opinions for a third post, hopefully which will be posted then. Until then I’d just like to note that the report is just starting to be scrutinized with a few players making statements contradicting what the report stated. Remember that the players named have usually only allegedly used prohibited substances, so reserve your judgment until all of the chips fall into place