Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Andy Pettitte Get Named in the Mitchell Report

Thursday morning, Senator George Mitchell released his report on steroid and other performance-enhancing substances in in Major League Baseball. In the release press conference before the world, Mitchell stated, “For more than a decade there has been widespread anabolic steroid use,” adding, “commissioners, club officials, the players’ association and players shares, to some extent, the responsibility for the steroids era.” Mitchell states that “each of the thirty clubs” have had players who have used steroids. Mitchell asked those in Major League Baseball to look to move forward and avoid punishing those implicated for past use.

Be that as it may, there will definitely be a massive public backlash with the often blood-thirsty media driving public opinion. As of now, reporting is going on all over the sports and news world, but little commentary has surfaced because few have read the report.

Mostly, people are clamoring over the list of names, which include many future Hall of Famers and current All-Stars as well as the unimpressive and ignored list of scrubs. Among the names listed, there were those with past links to steroid use, including Barry Bonds, Kevin Brown, Gary Sheffield, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and the late Ken Caminiti as well as new names such as most notably Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada, Eric Gagne and Paul Lo Duca.

The list, even on the report, is far from comprehensive, so by no means do we have the full scope of the usage, but we are beginning to have an idea. Until we have the full grasp of the problem, the blame will just be passed from person to person, official to official.

The steroids era is largely believed to have begun in 1993, although use began as early as the late 1980’s with Jose Conseco and Mark McGwire, perhaps earlier. We will probably never know every name of every player who used steroids, but we have an idea of the effect it has had as countless offensive and pitching records have fallen.

Simply put, steroids and performance enhancers make you stronger, quicker, more alert and recover from work-outs and injury much faster. Players like Clemens and Bonds demonstrated what is capable when a great player gets on the juice, historically-superior performances become possible.

Will baseball take a hit from all of this? Maybe, but I think it would be a little naive of us to pretend like we didn’t know anything. There have been whispers and jokes as long as the bulging biceps and tape-measure homers were staring us in the face. I think we will talk about it, some will be wrongly and overly-harshly be judged and we will move on.

Will baseball recover? Yes, but it may take a little time and it may take a special performance, of an even greater historical sort, to lift us truly beyond this all.