Mitchell Report Thread (Nothing to see here! Drugs are bad. Crisis averted!)

Re: Running Mitchell Report Thread (Selig: I plan to read it over X-mas break!)

To be fair, it's not ESPN being clueless. It's Steve Phillips reaffirming what we already knew.

 

Re: Running Mitchell Report Thread (Selig: I plan to read it over X-mas break!)

As to the strike, you resolve it the way strikes are always resolved - messily, acrimoniously, and with lots of armtwisting compromise and injury to all concerned. It's the nature of business.

To the rest - you formally ban however many substances from the game you identify as detrimental to the league. You put in place a rigorous testing program. You punish players who violate it. Same stuff he's doing now.

Trouble is, the position of Commissioner of Baseball is essentially a Stoogeship. You're there at the pleasure of the owners.

Selig's been more of a stooge than some, but if the owners and the PA don't sign off on your new program of squeakyclean anti-PE rigor - in 1994, or 2002, or next week - it doesn't much matter what you do.

 

Re: Running Mitchell Report Thread (Selig: I plan to read it over X-mas break!)

I'm sure I'm in the minority once again, but Steve's been pretty good today.

 

Re: Running Mitchell Report Thread (Selig: I plan to read it over X-mas break!)

I figure if this report is causing this much of a shit-storm, it must be doing some good. I think you can knock the report, but that's like complaining that the elephant in the room is an Asian elephant and not an African one.
Selig deserves credit for getting this out there.
I remember reading an SI piece on Roger Clemens "briefcase." The piece wasn't accusatory but more laudatory in how he was a physical marvel.
I think anyone being honest with themselves would agree that players like Bonds and Canseco have received much harsher treatment from the public while others, perhaps because they were less flamboyant, did the same things they did and were praised for their work ethic. No one comes out of this thing looking good. Can't believe Clemens is denying he did it. It did wonders for Barry.

 

Re: Running Mitchell Report Thread (Players list on pg. 19; What now?)

If Selig wasn't a patsy for the owners (partly because he was one), he should have been acting like a steward of the game and publicly threatening the owners and players to get their act together re: drug testing. He should have had the whistle to his mouth in 1996, when the numbers just exploded. (Brady Anderson? C'mon now.) He should have been whining, which he's very good at, and he should have kept whining. Tempering the joy that everyone was feeling in 1998.

Instead, he kept quiet and said nothing. Hear no evil, see no evil. There is no problem if we say there's no problem.

Selig was the only one with the power to do it. Sure, he would have lost his job, just like Chandler and Vincent, because the owners don't like their commish to be anyone but a patsy, but he was the only one who could have made a difference.

The owners weren't going to get drug testing implemented, even if they wanted to, without the MLBPA's consent. Selig knew that, and so did we. I can't blame him for that. But he could have pushed for it, and held the owners accountable, too.

But he didn't do that, because he liked his job too much, and all his old buddies in the suites, and aren't we glad to have fans back at the ballpark again, and look at all the home runs, everybody's so excited, it'll be just like Babe Ruth saving baseball from the Black Sox again, and maybe I'll play the grandfatherly old patriarch like the Judge and get a plaque in Cooperstown, too, wouldn't that be nice ...

 

Re: Running Mitchell Report Thread (Selig: I plan to read it over X-mas break!)

If you are Selig and fought for *real* testing in 2002, there would have been another strike. You know that, correct?

Page after page of selig-bashing, and I know its fun, but I rarely see the MLBPA looked at as culpable in this mess.

 

Re: Running Mitchell Report Thread (Selig: I plan to read it over X-mas break!)

I am not disagreeing with you, but not many specifics in that post on what selig should have done about PEDs thru the years.

If he held FIRM on testing, there would have been another strike, and he'd have been lambasted for that.

 

Re: Running Mitchell Report Thread (Selig: I plan to read it over X-mas break!)

I cited the PA as an impediment in my post. And as buckdubya said, and I agree, at some point Selig has to put his own position at risk for the greater good of the game. It's his job to convince the PA - and the fans - of the long term benefits of a clean game. This he can do by creating public pressure on the players to move in that direction.

ADD -

And having made that case - broadly and loudly and in public - if the players still strike, they don't have the public on their side.

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Clemens agent: please give us time to spin this)

Paging TSP, paging TSP.

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Clemens agent: please give us time to spin this)

ESPN says Clemens is denying the allegations.

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Clemens agent: please give us time to spin this)

Thanks.

I think the owners have made it very clear how they stand on the issue by signing Paul Byrd and Jose Guillen to new contracts while their hands have been in the steroid cookie jar this offseason.

 

Re: Running Mitchell Report Thread (Selig: I plan to read it over X-mas break!)

But he never had the power to do anything FIRM, anyway. That's why he should have distanced himself from the owners, and established himself as an independent commissioner.

Vincent did that, and it cost him his job. But he'll never be the commish who canceled a World Series, will he?

Selig could have done that, kept hammering the owners for continuing to dismiss the problem (including signing the Guillens and Byrds of the world) and kept hammering the players for continuing to fight the problem and hide behind the union.

He would have lost his job, too, but then he wouldn't be the commish who allowed the Steroid Era to flourish under his watch, would he?