Steroids in Baseball: The Mitchell Report

This will be the first of several articles I write about the Mitchell report. Hopefully these articles will be my most passionate and best written pieces. As an ex-baseball player and coach, I am outraged at several items within the report. Some of these include players who have let the sport and fans down, players who have lied and tried to throw teammates under the bus, hall of fame voter comments, and Mitchell himself. In Mitchell’s defense he reported what he was told, however based on little evidence Mitchell should not have jumped to some of the conclusions he made.

Before I write my next article I want to briefly outline the report.

George Mitchell submitted the report on Thursday and it was a well written 409 page document. Within the report Mitchell implemented 86 players who he believed took steroids, HGH, or other illegal performance enhancers. Of the 86, 33 of them played baseball during the 2007 season. The breakdown of the 86 players is as follows:
Hitters: 54
Pitchers: 31
All-Stars: 31
Total All-Star Appearances: 109
World Series Titles: 34
Cy Youngs: 8, but to be fair 7 were Roger Clemens’
Rookie of the year: 4
Total Homeruns: 7477
40+ Homerun Seasons: 29
50+ Homerun Seasons: 1
HR Titles Won: 6
Pitcher Wins: 1803
Strikeouts: 22188
20+ Win Seasons: 10
220+ Career HR: 14
Yankees from 2000 WS Championship: 9

As you can see the report no doubt showed us what we already knew: baseball has a steroid problem. We knew the pitchers were stronger, we knew the hitters reached greater heights, and we knew that Canseco and Bonds were guilty- both were mention over 100 times. What we didn’t know was that Clemens might be involved, that a skinny David Justice would be implicated, that Chuck Knoblauch was shooting juice (shouldn’t he have been better then?), that Hall of Fame voters do not see steroids as cheating, or that the reason Rafael Palmiero supported Viagra was because the steroids affected, well you know.

Over the next few days I will be posted several articles on this matter and will address quotes made by all different types of members affected, as well as provide an appropriate action that should be taken against some of the members.