Buffball

To: Retort
Via: MH

The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners
Dave Zirin
December 14, 2007

Ever had someone spit in your face and tell you it's raining? 
That's how it felt watching former Sen. George Mitchell's press 
conference on steroid use in Major League Baseball. The former 
Senate Majority Leader unleashed his "investigative findings" 
speaking with the somber, deliberate tones of an exhausted 
undertaker. Mitchell strained to convey scorn upon both baseball 
owners and the union for being "slow to act." Yet beneath the 
surface, his report is ugly sanctimonious fraud, meant to absolve 
those at the top and pin blame on a motley crew of retired players, 
trainers, and clubhouse attendants. This is truly the old saw of 
the magical fishing net that captures minnows but lets the whales 
swim free.

Sanctioned by Commissioner Bud Selig's office, the Mitchell Report 
was seen by some as an unprecedented act in sports: a 20 million 
dollar internal investigation aimed at rooting out "performance 
enhancing drugs and human growth hormones" in the game.

The Mitchell Report certainly contains a great deal of sexy sizzle. 
First and foremost, it names names: including MVPs Mo Vaughn, 
Miguel Tejada and Barry Bonds as well as former all stars like Eric 
Gagne and Lenny Dykstra. It also names a man being called the Moby 
Dick to Mitchell's Ahab: seven time Cy Young award winner Roger 
Clemens. For some time, people in the game have whispered about 
Clemens being on the juice. And for some time, the 45-year-old 
Clemens denied all charges, as a compliant media lapped it up. As 
Yahoo Sports Dan Wetzel wrote, "Year after year he peddled the same 
garbage, Roger Clemens was so dominant for so long because he 
simply outworked everyone. It played to the nation's Puritan roots, 
made Clemens out to be this everyman maximizing his skills through 
singular focus, dedication and a commitment to drinking carrot 
juice, or something. It's all gone now, the legend of Rocket Roger 
dead on arrival of the Mitchell Report; one of the greatest 
pitchers of all time, his seven Cy Young's and 354 career victories 
lost to history under a pile of lies and syringes."

The Mitchell Report confirms not only suspicions about Clemens, but 
also the existence of an outrageous media bias and double standard. 
While seven time MVP Barry Bonds was raked over the conjecture-
coals for years, Clemens got a pass. Two players, both dominant 
into their 40s, one black and one white, with two entirely 
different ways of being treated. It doesn't take Al Sharpton to do 
the cultural calculus.

And yet, flaying Clemens shouldn't excuse the gross whitewash at 
work.

There are three fundamental problems with the Mitchell report:

1 - Mitchell himself. George Mitchell, the former Senate Majority 
leader best known before today for helping negotiate the peace deal 
in Northern Ireland, has had a massive conflict of interest when it 
comes to baseball. The man is on the boards of both the Boston Red 
Sox and also the Walt Disney Company. The Disney Company owns ESPN, 
baseball's number one broadcast partner. Joe Morgan has spoken out 
about how in the 1990s, ESPN execs encouraged him not to state his 
suspicions about steroid use on-air. As Morgan said, "I would be 
broadcasting a game and there would be players hitting balls in a 
way that they had no business hitting them."

2 - No testimony from players. The only active player to speak to 
Mitchell was New York Yankee Jason Giambi, and he spoke under 
threat of suspension. Mitchell says he invited the accused to come 
clear their names, but no one took him up on this generous offer. 
Yet if you are a MLB player, why would you come forward to 
legitimize a process in which you wouldn't even have the 
opportunity to face your accuser? This is a process where Mitchell 
was judge, jury, and executioner: Gitmo meets Skoal. Reputations 
have been ruined - and the essential "truth" of the report is still 
based on hearsay.

3 - Same old narrative. Mitchell paid lip service in his press 
conference to "slow acting" owners -- calling it "a collective 
failure." At one point, Mitchell said -- without explanation -- 
that baseball execs were slow due to "economic motives." Yet the 
overarching narrative is that the owners and general managers were 
merely ignorant or obtuse, with a complete absence of malice. The 
real fault lied with players and independent acting clubhouse 
attendants, like the soon to be famous Mets worker Kirk Radomski, 
who says he secured the juice for players and named names. Radomski 
was described by former Mets GM Steve Phillips as "the guy who 
would pick up the towels or pick up a player's girlfriend from the 
airport." Yes, Kirk Radomski, a regular Pablo Escobar.

Mitchell went on to say that players have actively and on their own 
made great efforts to foil the owners' poorly organized efforts to 
clean up the game. This is the same kind of political cover - as 
Naomi Klein has written so brilliantly - that the mainstream press 
gives the Bush administration on Iraq. Errors made are ones of 
people with good intentions who made terrible choices. Those who 
suffered from these choices are blamed for their barbarism and self-
interest. When Baghdad was looted and destroyed, Iraqis were 
pilloried for their greed. Rumsfeld, Bush, and Cheney were blamed 
for being "overly optimistic" and "trusting them too much."

This is poppycock, whether we're talking about the Bush cabal, or 
Major League Owners. Performance enhancing drugs were funneled into 
the game along with smaller stadiums, harder bats, and incredible 
shrinking strike zones to boost power numbers and ratings after the 
1994 strike. (Read Howard Bryant's excellent Juicing the Game for 
the full break down.)

The idea that owners and GMs facilitated these measures while 
leaving the very conditioning of players to themselves simply 
strains belief: this is George HW Bush saying he was "out of the 
loop" on Iran-Contra. This is Dubya saying, "I never read" the 
National Intelligence Estimate before claiming World War III is on 
the horizon. In other words, this is the way people in power stay 
in power during times of crisis: take some heat, blame the 
underlings, cry some tears, and call it a day.

Dave Zirin is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: 
The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports (Haymarket).