The Mitchell Report and how it's related to the Red Sox & Beyond
The Mitchell Report will be just as important as Juiced when history looks back on the steroid era. (Mitchell Report Screen-shot)
Before I get started with my analysis of the Mitchell Report let's first talk about the special version we put together here at SawxBlog. This version is a condensed PDF of the report with only the pages that contain the words Red Sox on them. There were 23 total pages that contained the words Red Sox on them, and the words Red Sox appeared (by my count) a total of 37 times. If you try to read this version cover-to-cover it probably won't make too much sense to you, and it will appear jumbled. However this will let you know the context that the words Red Sox were brought up in the report, which is at the very least interesting. I will also provide a link to the complete report which I also highly recommend reading. In the SawxBlog Red Sox version any appearance of the words Red Sox is highlighted yellow for your convenience.
Depending on your Browser you may have to right-click to save the SawxBlog Red Sox version.
- Click Here to Download the SawxBlog Red Sox version of the Mitchell Report
- Click Here to Download the Complete Mitchell Report
So it's taken me a little while to throw my hat in the ring on the issue of the Mitchell Report, however I'm confident enough to say that I feel like I have a fairly good grasp on both the report and what it means for baseball, and more specifically, the Boston Red Sox. Bold statement I know, but it's one I'm willing to make. Being the baseball dork I am, the first thing I did when the report was released was to print it out and run down to the Boylston Street Copy Cop and get all 409 pages of the report bound for posterity sake, as well as readability. This report is something that's going right into my baseball library, and may be one of my more prized pieces. I've read the entire report cover to cover, and feel it's an important moment in baseball history, and one that a lot can be learned from.
Much like Jose Canseco's book Juiced was scoffed at when it was first published, so was the Mitchell
Report by a lot of baseball experts upon its release. However as we've been seeing over the past month, running parallel with the life of Juiced, the longer the Mitchell Report is out there, the more credibility and steam it gains. This is happening a lot faster then it did for Juiced, however Juiced helped pave the way for this report and other books such as Game of Shadows, and has allowed these books and reports to be viewed with a less skeptical eye.
With the amount of players coming forward and admitting to their involvement in the report also gives it that much more credibility, and really is the biggest asset of the report. The report does a wonderful job of outlining the history of not only steroids and baseball, but drug use in general in baseball, which obviously runs along the same line (no pun indented) as steroids. My biggest gripe about the report is that doesn't really present a clear cut solution to the problem presented to baseball by steroids. Maybe this wasn't the end result, but the Mitchell Report is clearly a large step in not moving away from the steroid era, but accepting it as a fact, and moving on from there.
A lot of people were expecting or hoping for the Mitchell Report to be "the final chapter" on the steroid era, as well as "close the book" on the issues involving steroids. However the fact of the matter is that to able to close the door you'd have to be out of the room, and with new designer steroid drugs being made all the time, with resulting different varying degrees of detection by baseball (and sports in general) we probably will never truly be out of the steroid era. Who knows maybe we'll now call it the "HGH Era", or "Steroid Era: The Golden Years". HGH is the perfect example of this, and even though it's now widely known about on the public stage, there's still no real way to try and detect it via blood or urine tests. A lot of the players who were indicted in the Mitchell Report were indicted because of internet and paper trails they left behind, and I think that's where a lot of the future for "catching" players using illegal substances lies. Like everything in life though, everything is ever evolving, and so will it be with trying to keep up with how and what players are using.
As far as the Red Sox and the Mitchell Report go, the Sox got off fairly easy, but still had some big-time names included. They did have a former MVP (Mo Vaughn, one of my all-time favorite players...) named, as well as two players from the 2007 Championship team (Gagme & Donnelly), however aside from the Paxton Crawford incident (which wasn't really news), it was fairly minor. Does this mean that no Red Sock on the 2004 squad used steroids, or that only two on the 2007 team used steroids? Of course not. You'd have to be the blindest homer in the world to not recognize and accept that every team in MLB baseball was and is affected by this. Christ, Jose Canseco was in our beloved Fenway Clubhouse, that alone tells you the Sox are clean by no means.
What I liked about the report that some don't is that names were named. Now, we'll never know every player who used steroids from 1980-2006, that's impossible, but we have to know some, and it may not be fair that some aren't mentioned, but you know what life isn't fair, and if you play sometimes you have to pay. If you had the advantage of the enhancement of steroids and were playing with loaded dice then what you get is what you get, and you're getting no sympathy from me. I love the fact that finally pitchers are really being thrown into the ring of steroid users, and it's no longer just "dudes who can hit a long ball" that are/were considered users.. Which leads me the that big lying Texan, and the best pitcher in Red Sox history, Roger Clemens.
I'm not going to write much on this clown right now because I'm going to wait until he digs his grave a little deeper with his 60 Minutes interview, but it sure is saying a lot about baseball that in the past 20 years the best hitter (Barry Bonds) and the best pitcher (Roger Clemens) both used steroids. I think Roger's embarrassing himself and his reputation an immense amount with how he's handling this and it really is a shame he can't man up like a lot of other people and admit the truth. But what do you expect, he's always been a paid mercenary who cared most about money, and by him taking 'roids he sure got more money. Maybe Dan Duquette was right when he said he was entering the "twilight of his career", it doesn't seem so crazy anymore that's for sure.
So yeah, in short (or is it long now?), the Mitchell Report helped open the umbrella a little further on how deep steroids have penetrated the game, and the depth goes as deep as bone. It's now a hitter/pitcher thing, and the very best of each of those is involved. We further know and have the history of this evolution down, however until we can really breakdown the good ol' boy fraternity and get players to talk more openly about the use of steroids, we'll only find out the who and the when little by little, and piece by piece.
The solution? Your guess is as good as mine but be sure to stay tuned, this is far from over. That's one point the Mitchell Report was sure to make.
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