The Mitchell Report: Pre-Game Show

Well, here we are at the dawn of baseball history.  The Mitchell Report goes public in about 2 hours, marking probably one of the top three most significantly negative off-the-field events in the 125+ years of professional baseball (the 1919 Black Sox and the 1994 cancellation of the World Series are the only two others that come to my mind as even being in the same ballpark).  Before the actual announcement, the rumors abound about what this 1,000-page document will include.  Here are bits and pieces of what I have heard that were of interest to me:

–The most prominent name that has been thrown around is Roger Clemens.  Personally, I am not upset one bit about this.  I have always seen Clemens as a pompous egomaniac, who always puts himself before the team, while using his family as a veil for his blatant selfishnes (a la Brett Favre).  If he is named in this report, and it speaks with credibility, the big question now becomes:  How is Roger Clemens any different than Barry Bonds?  It will be fascinating to see how that plays out in the next couple of months/years.  Personally, I do not think their situations are different at all, but I can see three possible reasons why the media may cover them differently: 

• Clemens is a pitcher–maybe the media could swing the public opinion in a way that says that pitchers do not gain quite the same advantages as hitters, and, honestly, I think there is some merit (to a point) in this argument.  Just not in this case. 
• Clemens is perceived as a “good guy” because he gives interviews and is generally liked by the media.  Again, in my opinion, no reason to give him a pass in the history books.
• Clemens is white.  I DESPISE the overuse of the race card (sounds like a topic for a pet peeve) because it has become so commonplace in any conversation that surrounds two players of different ethnicities, even when race has absolutely NOTHING to do with the topic.  However, in this case, I believe that if Clemens gets that proverbial on this, as compared to Bonds, it may be legitimately to do with race.  Hopefully it will not happen, but we shall see.

–The Bergen Record is reporting that “several prominent New York Yankees will be named in the report.”  This begs the question:  Who?  Obviously, Clemens is an odds-on favorite, but from everything I have heard, it sounds like it is going to be multiple players.  Though I have not heard his name anywhere, it would not surprise me if Andy Pettitte was named because of his closeness to Roger, his ageless effectiveness and the fact that he quickly signed a new contract right before the release of this report.  Further, though I am not a Yankees fan in any way, I genuinely hope that the names Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter are as far from that report as Bryan Cimorelli and Dan Doogan.  I do not root for A-Rod or Jeter, but I do root for the game of baseball.  A-Rod, though he has his obvious faults, has always been perceived to put up clean gawdy numbers in an era of very dirty gawdy numbers.  And Jeter, well let us just say that Derek Jeter (though I find myself often rooting against his also) actually is to baseball what everyone believed Cal Ripken, Jr was–a clean-cut, friendly, hard-nosed, talented, dedicated, hard-working, five-tooled shortstop who plays the game the “right way” (whatever that means).  I will not get into my feelings on Ripken (wow, that would take a long post), but I do feel that Jeter is who is portrayed to be, and I hope that he is not implicated in any way by the Mitchell Report.

–The days leading up to the report saw a relative flurry of action in the major leagues:

• The Orioles traded Miguel Tejada to the Houston Astros for five prospects
• The Giants signed Aaron Rowand to a 5-year deal (as first reported in minor detail here on BSB)
• The Dodgers signed Andruw Jones to a 2-year deal
• Other players that have changed teams recently include:  Eric Gagne, Edgar Renteria, Orlando Cabrera, Paul Lo Duca, Randy Wolf, Jose Guillen, Miguel Cabera and Dontrell Willis, Elijah Dukes, Delmon Young, and Lastings Milledge

It should be very interesting to see if any of these players are named in the report (we already know that Guillen has been suspended), and whether or not that affected any decisions that they or their teams made.  Many sportswriters in Baltimore believe that the Orioles may have been able to get more for Tejada, but they had to take the best deal on the table before the report was released.  Now, that is simply presumptive, but it does make some sense.

–There seem to be four big warning signs of steroid use:  (1) an all-of-a-sudden power surge in the late-90s, (2) an all-of-a-sudden power decline in the last year or two, (3) agelessness (mainly in pitchers), and (4) unnatural body mass.  It will be interesting to see how many of the players named fall into any of these categories and how many are people we would not expect, based on these four prototypical ‘roiders.  For example, I would not be surprised to see guys similar to the following (I am, by no means implicating any of these players, just using them as examples):  Jeff Kent, Greg Vaughn or Richard Hidalgo (category 1); Todd Helton (category 2); Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman or John Smoltz(category 3); Troy Glaus or Eric Gagne (category 4).  Maybe the Mitchell Report will give us more updated characteristics of steroid users.  Either way, it should be interesting.  I will be tuned in to the wall-to-wall coverage of this “sporting event.”