The Mitchell Report on Performance Enhancing Drug Use in Baseball came out today, and Names were Named. It looks like it's *both* a bombshell and a whitewash... Looking over the list, one big name stands out and the Yanks are certainly the hardest hit (see sidebar). A huge majority of the names come from one source, Mets trainer Kirk Radomski, which slants things in an NY direction, though a large fraction of the 'roiders on the Yankees are big names (Clemens, Pettite, Knoblauch, Giambi, Sheffield, Brown, Justice).

The big surprises for me are Brian Roberts and Paul Lo Duca -- these are two guys who are always described as "playing the game the right way". Jayson Stark is one of the few warning us to not rush to judgement, though.

The main recommendation (which many thing doesn't itself even go far enough) is to increase testing. I think, though, that the place to start is actually the front office: one of the things made clear is that the GMs actually had a pretty good idea of who was doping, but often went ahead with it anyway. (The situation is obviously more complex than that but it's still very troubling). Right now there isn't really a down side for the *team* if someone uses -- but the league could change that if they wanted. 

posted by mrflip in Sports at 03:12AM CST on Dec 14 [trackback] (2 comments total)