Zero Sox being named = bogus

[Mavrik]

There is actually little in the way of evidence if the 80 players actually used the drugs. There is evidence that they paid for, or received the drugs, but except for about 20 of them, no evidence that they used the drugs exists.

Except for some assumptions and hear-say from Radomski. I spoke to a Labor lawyer friend, who has had extensive dealings with MLB in the past, and it is his opinion, that if some of these players sued, they would win easily, as there is precious little in the way of evidence that shows actual use, for most of them.

If I'm caught buying or in possession of Cocaine, does it matter that I haven't been found using the drug?

[Mavrik]

You tell me what man in his mid 30's has acne marks on his face the size of potholes only found on the BQE during construction periods after being clean in his 20's

That was never the point of my question. I have no doubt in my opinion that McGwire used roids. But people are complaining just because McGwire is not in the report aside from his Congressional testimony. People base his steroid use solely on his refusal to answer a question before the senate whether he took steroids or not. But there is no concrete evidence as of yet that he took roids.

Selig hates George. Everyone knows tat. George defied him at every turn possible.

There's a difference between disliking someone and knowing when someone is making your league a s***load of money. Regardless of what Selig thinks of Steinbrenner, I think Selig is smart enough to know not to mess with a bad thing.

The only Cubs they could have interviewed were having surgery that day

The entire Cubs roster could have been roiding up and they still wouldn't have made the World Series.

[Bugg]

There is actually little in the way of evidence if the 80 players actually used the drugs. There is evidence that they paid for, or received the drugs, but except for about 20 of them, no evidence that they used the drugs exists.

Except for some assumptions and hear-say from Radomski. I spoke to a Labor lawyer friend, who has had extensive dealings with MLB in the past, and it is his opinion, that if some of these players sued, they would win easily, as there is precious little in the way of evidence that shows actual use, for most of them.

Brian Roberts is mentioned in the report because 2nd hand it's said Larry Bigbie told someone that Roberts told him he had used steroids once or twice when he was young. So the report, based on 3rd hand unsworn hearsay-basically a rumor that would not be admissible in any court- implicates a guy who they have no concrete evidence did anything. Is that fair? Is that a professional investigation?

[mbn007]

If I'm caught buying or in possession of Cocaine, does it matter that I haven't been found using the drug?

Difference.

MLB only suspends for failing a drug test, or, in layman's terms, actual use of teh banned substance.

Cocaine is a different issue.

[mbn007]

The only Cubs they could have interviewed were having surgery that day

The entire Cubs roster could have been roiding up and they still wouldn't have made the World Series.

Man, you really are tough on your Cubbies.

WOW!!

[mbn007]

Brian Roberts is mentioned in the report because 2nd hand it's said Larry Bigbie told someone that Roberts told him he had used steroids once or twice when he was young. So the report, based on 3rd hand unsworn hearsay-basically a rumor that would not be admissible in any court- implicates a guy who they have no concrete evidence did anything. Is that fair? Is that a professional investigation?

Makes one wonder what Baseball got for their 20+ million.

[faba]

People complaining about the report- Mitchell is not a full time employee of baseball- it was not going to be report on every single player in baseball-it is up to baseball to police itself and hand out penalties-not George Mitchell- his report shows some of the problems -was never meant to be all inclusive of evry single person in the history of baseball.

[Mavrik]

Difference.

MLB only suspends for failing a drug test, or, in layman's terms, actual use of teh banned substance.

Cocaine is a different issue.

I agree there are a difference between the two, especially in terms of testing positive for it. But if your found buying or have cocaine on you, chances are you used it. If I find steroids on someone, I doubt he was holding them for his buddies.

That said, yes from a testing standpoint, you have to test positive to have 100% proof, but then again if a guy is found buying roids I don't have to wait for a test to think that the guy is using them.

[mbn007]

I agree there are a difference between the two, especially in terms of testing positive for it. But if your found buying or have cocaine on you, chances are you used it. If I find steroids on someone, I doubt he was holding them for his buddies.

That said, yes from a testing standpoint, you have to test positive to have 100% proof, but then again if a guy is found buying roids I don't have to wait for a test to think that the guy is using them.

So. is David Justice guilty? He claims they were left in his locker, without his knowledge, and never used them. Afraid of needles. So it's his word vs. a 3rd party.

Who is to be believed?

[PFSIKH]

Yes I did. And Bugg is correct here.

The bottom line is that Mitchell based his entire report on Federal cases (Bonds), FBI raids (Pharmacy in Fla., Albany DA office, Balco) and the testimony of 1 Mets clubhouse attendant, and 1 Yankee trainer. Nothing from any other team, nothing from any other player aside from Thomas (the "unnamed player") and Giambi.

How seriously can this report be taken when he did not touch on the other 28 teams? All his player s mentioned had ties to one of the above groups. He left out, IMO, 93.3% of all users (28/30). He only received information from 2 of the 30 teams.

That is a fair point.

However, it should be taken seriously. Baseball's over-dabbling in amphetamines and such is not folklore.

I do not think it is a stretch to say that Canseco's numbers are fairly accurate. Let's be realistic here though, if they came out and said Mark Sweeney took something, would half of baseball fans know his name?

Baseball has to go after the big fish in order to enact change. 50 game suspensions to nobody's means little.

[mbn007]

That is a fair point.

However, it should be taken seriously. Baseball's over-dabbling in amphetamines and such is not folklore.

I do not think it is a stretch to say that Canseco's numbers are fairly accurate. Let's be realistic here though, if they came out and said Mark Sweeney took something, would half of baseball fans know his name?

Baseball has to go after the big fish in order to enact change. 50 game suspensions to nobody's means little.

Would keeping McGuire out of the HOF, as well as Bonds, Palmiero, and Clemens, send a message? It is a start.

[haggis]

Man, you really are tough on your Cubbies.

WOW!!

Mav is a Tigers fan I think.

[NIGHT STALKER]

I agree there are a difference between the two, especially in terms of testing positive for it. But if your found buying or have cocaine on you, chances are you used it. If I find steroids on someone, I doubt he was holding them for his buddies.

That said, yes from a testing standpoint, you have to test positive to have 100% proof, but then again if a guy is found buying roids I don't have to wait for a test to think that the guy is using them.

Part of your post is 100% wrong. When I worked for the airlines back in the day, I had this connection where you could say, purchased "stuff"...one of the items wa anabolic steriods. Never, ever used them on myself, but my cousin who was a police officer at the time did and I supplied him...for about 3 years. So, if anyone found them in my possession, I never used them.

[Barton]

There is zero absolute concrete evidence that anybody on this list used steroids. This whole thing was just a waste of time and money.

[AVM]

There is zero absolute concrete evidence that anybody on this list used steroids. This whole thing was just a waste of time and money.

I wonder if you'd be saying the same thing if it was Ortiz, Ramirez, and Josh Beckett on that list. Hmm...

[mbn007]

Mav is a Tigers fan I think.

I know that.

I didn't realize that I said "your" instead of "the".

[Maxman]

The NYPOST pointed out today why the Sox were in large part spared on that list.

Mitchell simply did not have access to the source in their clubhouse like he did with the NY clubhouse attendant along with MacNamee. The same holds true for other teams throught baseball.

If not for the Mets clubhouse guy and Clemens personal roid guy supplying names, Mitchell's list would have basically been a Balco repeat with the addittion of some new info from the Grimsley bust.

We can pretty much be assured that yesterdays list was just a small number of the users throughout the game.

I agree but this is why they can't hand down suspensions to people on this list. It is a small sample size. There are many more, they just didn't have access.

I think this report, like most things that Bud Selig does, is a joke. Bud needed to take some blame here. He didn't. Preserve your legacy Bud.

[Maxman]

Part of your post is 100% wrong. When I worked for the airlines back in the day, I had this connection where you could say, purchased "stuff"...one of the items wa anabolic steriods. Never, ever used them on myself, but my cousin who was a police officer at the time did and I supplied him...for about 3 years. So, if anyone found them in my possession, I never used them.

I used to think you were on the juice. You had what I like to call, "posting rage". You seem much calmer now.

[NIGHT STALKER]

I used to think you were on the juice. You had what I like to call, "posting rage". You seem much calmer now.

LOL...in all seriousness, I was a mod on a small site called the Green House and we went at it on a daily basis...it was insane. I brought that rage to this site when I first joined over two years ago. I like to think that I've come a long way in realizing that WTF, it's just a damn "message board"...not saying that once in awile a post or poster gets under my skin (hey, I'm not dead yet), but I've learned to channel my emotions better.

Frankly Phil, this is the best Jets/sports forum on the net and I'm not trying to get any rep points out of it...

[Kidhuman]

That was never the point of my question. I have no doubt in my opinion that McGwire used roids. But people are complaining just because McGwire is not in the report aside from his Congressional testimony. People base his steroid use solely on his refusal to answer a question before the senate whether he took steroids or not. But there is no concrete evidence as of yet that he took roids.

There is no concrete evidence that any of these big names took them either. Bonds, Clemens, Pettitte, Justice or any of them have never failed a drug test. This is from one mans word who was threatened with jail time and feds beating down his door if he didnt say things they wanted to hear. Its BS, the whole report is BS.

[Thor99]

Frankly Phil, this is the best Jets/sports forum on the net and I'm not trying to get any rep points out of it...

Neg rep for your passive aggresive attempt at gaining rep.

[NIGHT STALKER]

Neg rep for your passive aggresive attempt at gaining rep.

No respect for the older guys on here...

[Boozer76]

Here's one thing I found that I have a real issue with-On page 100-101 he goes over the Florida Marlins incident where Perez, a bullpen catcher for the Marlins, supplied "all the players of the Marlins with some sort of illegal drug, including steroids". This information was obtained second hand through Kevin Hallinan-vice president of security to the Commish. Hallinan named 8 players to Mitchell that were given to him as having received steroids from Perez, as told to him by Perez himself. Citing the information as second hand Mitchell opts to not name the 8 players in this report.

Now, he received commentary from a player (who's name escapes me) that Brian Roberts lived with he and another player who both used steroids regularly but stated that at no time while thy live together did Roberts ever use steroids with them. He then went on to say he thought Roberts admitted he used them once or twice prior to them living together at one point in an off handed comment.

Brian Roberts has been dragged into this from nothing more than the worst kind of second hand knowledge available, yet the 8 players on the Marlins in 2002 go unnamed because Mitchell feel's Hallinan-the senior VP of security o the commissioner-is not credible enough? Somebody please justify this to me. This is why Mitchell was a horrible choice for this investigation. His ties to the Red Sox and MLB brings up suspicion on every level. While I would say with 99% probability that he reported with good intentions, how can one possibly not speculate that maybe Josh Beckett is one of those 8 players that were named by the "non credible" VP of security?

[Bugg]

Here's one thing I found that I have a real issue with-On page 100-101 he goes over the Florida Marlins incident where Perez, a bullpen catcher for the Marlins, supplied "all the players of the Marlins with some sort of illegal drug, including steroids". This information was obtained second hand through Kevin Hallinan-vice president of security to the Commish. Hallinan named 8 players to Mitchell that were given to him as having received steroids from Perez, as told to him by Perez himself. Citing the information as second hand Mitchell opts to not name the 8 players in this report.

Now, he received commentary from a player (who's name escapes me) that Brian Roberts lived with he and another player who both used steroids regularly but stated that at no time while thy live together did Roberts ever use steroids with them. He then went on to say he thought Roberts admitted he used them once or twice prior to them living together at one point in an off handed comment.

Brian Roberts has been dragged into this from nothing more than the worst kind of second hand knowledge available, yet the 8 players on the Marlins in 2002 go unnamed because Mitchell feel's Hallinan-the senior VP of security o the commissioner-is not credible enough? Somebody please justify this to me. This is why Mitchell was a horrible choice for this investigation. His ties to the Red Sox and MLB brings up suspicion on every level. While I would say with 99% probability that he reported with good intentions, how can one possibly not speculate that maybe Josh Beckett is one of those 8 players that were named by the "non credible" VP of security?

The player is Larry Bigbie.

Also today Mitchell's squad told media people that one player who admittedy bought steroids or HGH destroyed it and didn't use it, and claimed to have offered proof of having destroyed it, was ommitted from the report at the last minute. Who was this player? Why was he spared?

But a guy like Roberts-subject of a 3nd hand rumor of possible long past usage-inlcluded. Justice alss is adamant that he was willing to take any test, but they never got back to him.If you heard Justice's timeline of when he met Macnamee when he was traded to the Yanks, his story sounds pretty plausible that while Macnamee, unsolicited, offered to get him legally-prescribed HGH but he declined-it sounds reasonable.While they had cancelled checks and specific allegations of drugs being administered to Clemens and Pettitte, they had no such thing with Justice. Still, he and Roberts gets included, and a mystery player who admits to buying drugs but comes up with the oldest excuse in the druggie handbook next to holding the stuff for a friend, is not.

[Maxman]

LOL...in all seriousness, I was a mod on a small site called the Green House and we went at it on a daily basis...it was insane. I brought that rage to this site when I first joined over two years ago. I like to think that I've come a long way in realizing that WTF, it's just a damn "message board"...not saying that once in awile a post or poster gets under my skin (hey, I'm not dead yet), but I've learned to channel my emotions better.

Frankly Phil, this is the best Jets/sports forum on the net and I'm not trying to get any rep points out of it...

Another graduate of our poster reform school! hahaha.

Passion is a good thing. We just can't let it get the best of us. This is sports related and we are Jets fans. That is a bad combination!

[DaBrick Wall]

I didn't have the patience to read through this whole thread. But take a Republican senator and have him head off an investigation of the President and his cabinet's handling of Iraq. Oh, right, he'll still be on "leave" for the time, but he'll still come back a Republican senator. Or even a Democrat senator, for that matter. To say that they're not going to have a bias one way or the other is wrong.

Mitchell was on "leave" from the Red Sox, but he's going to come back working for them just the way he did. You think if he named someone like Varitek they'd even let him near his job again?

And stop saying Pettitte and Clemens and every other Yankee without a positive test or DOCUMENTED PROOF took steroids. There is absolutely NO tangible evidence--how can I stress this more--NO tangible evidence that either of them used. The testimony is from two guys on plea deals.

[DaBrick Wall]

Listen to David Justice's interview. This "report" is laughable. David Justice gave better evidence of why he's NEVER taken anything in 24 hours than Mitchell gave of why he did take something in 20 freaking months.

[Bugg]

I'm not suprised Pettitte fessed up to HGH. I'm not suprised Clemens probably used. But I am disgusted by the flimsiness and weakness of this report. 18 months, $ 20 million and they spoke to 4 guys-Frank Thomas(previously called the unknown active player), Giambi, Macnamee and Radomsky. You could've done that in an afternoon with a digital recorder, a lapttop and pizza, and done it for a whole bunch less.

Still, Mitchell is a joke, Today in the news, Pee Wee Vermin, that total sissy corksoaker Sawx fan Mike Lupica, does everything short of giving Mitchell a happy ending. Here's some reality-

Steroids List May Be Long, but Report Is Hollow

Baseball

BY TIM MARCHMAN

December 14, 2007

URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/68109

To understand the importance of Senator George Mitchell's investigation into baseball's drug scandals, issued today after two years of frenzied anticipation, one must understand that Mitchell is not a neutral party.

Because the truth is usually right out in the open, it is no surprise to find a list of all the conflicts of interest that prevent Mitchell from credibly playing any independent role in baseball tucked away near the end of his voluminous report. As a consultant to Boston Red Sox ownership, a former director of the Florida Marlins, and former chairman of Disney at a time when it owned both the Anaheim Angels and ESPN, Mitchell is a member of baseball management as surely as anyone now living.

More crucially, he served with former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, columnist George Will, and Yale president Richard Levin on the 2000 Blue Ribbon commission. That group produced a notoriously owner-friendly report on baseball economics that used cooked numbers to make a case for various mechanisms meant to suppress player salaries. It laid the ground for the biggest shift in power between owners and players since the 1970s, and set a template for how to do so: Establish a nominally independent commission with ties to Congress, propose owner-friendly policies, and then watch as Congress hammers the players into submission. In 2000, the Senate actually found time to hold hearings on competitive balance in baseball, and it didn't take long for owners to force the union to accept many of the Blue Ribbon panel's recommendations.

With this background, Mitchell is hardly an onlooker, uninvolved in the sport's inner workings; he's been one of the most powerful men in the game for many years. In his report, he blithely asserts that he is "confident that none of these matters affected my ability to conduct an investigation that was thorough, impartial, and fair," but while his investigation may have been all of these things, his report is none of them. Self-contradicting, naive, and radical all at once, it could prove far more damaging to baseball than any tainted home run record.

For most, the main takeaway will be the list of 77 names of alleged drug users. Headlined by the Yankees' Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte and the Houston Astros' Miguel Tejada, the list takes in everyone from three former Mets catchers to Eric Gagne, and in its sheer weight seems to confirm both the most salacious speculation about what Mitchell would uncover and the massive scope of the drug problem. More closely examined, it does neither, and in fact reveals how shockingly little Mitchell found.

Take those three banner names. Clemens is perhaps the greatest pitcher of all time, Pettitte was an anchor of the recent Yankees dynasty, and Tejada is a former MVP. Doubtless the allegations against them—and they're credible accusations, backed up by documentary evidence or eyewitness testimony given on the record—will shock many.

Just last year, though, there were reports that former teammate Jason Grimsley had named Clemens and Pettitte as users in a federal affidavit. When the story broke, both offered odd, lawerly denials. Clemens didn't deny the accusation, saying instead, "I have passed every test." (The drug at issue was human growth hormone, for which there is no test.) Pettitte said "I've never used any drugs to enhance my performance in baseball," which is an awfully specific way to say you haven't used any drugs.

For his part, Tejada was accused of use in Jose Canseco's 2005 book "Juiced," and his name surfaced later that year when Rafael Palmeiro blamed him for a failed steroid test.

What Mitchell offers, then, is not new information, but lurid detail. ("Clemens said that he was not able to inject himself, and he asked for McNamee's help... McNamee injected Clemens approximately four times in the buttocks over a several-week period with needles that Clemens provided.") This detail came not from Mitchell's own commission, but from the access the federal government provided to witnesses and suspects in ongoing drug investigations. Conditioning coach Brian McNamee and drug dealer Kirk Radomski were both interviewed with federal agents participating. Radomski, then working out a plea bargaining arrangement with a U.S. attorney, was warned that giving Mitchell false statements would subject to criminal penalty and a harsher sentence.

Federal law enforcement didn't need to tie Mitchell's inquiry in to a plea bargaining agreement, and would almost certainly not have done so for any random collection of citizens holding a private inquiry into steroid use. Such a decision is inherently political, involving as it does relative power, which was of course the genius of appointing Mitchell: it allowed baseball to leverage the credibility he earned in a career as a distinguished senator and diplomat into access to federal power. To what end, though, does any of this work?

Anyone who was paying attention knew a year ago that there was at least as much evidence against Clemens as there was against the disgraced Mark McGwire. What Mitchell adds are the stark details and mechanics of how drugs are used. But everyone knows this already, and learning the details of a player's squeamishness about needles add nothing to public understanding. To expose such details is nothing but vicious, needless humiliation—especially when they're sourced to someone who was under legal pressure to make you happy.

The same is true of nearly half the players on Mitchell's list. Their inclusion is simply gratuitous. Sixteen names were simply scooped up from recent media reports on a federal investigation into online drug trafficking, eight were names that came out in the Balco scandal, and nearly a dozen more had previously come out one way or another. Some, like Ryan Franklin, had even failed drug tests. This leaves us with around 40 names who come as surprises. Some of them truly great players, like Kevin Brown; most are obscure journeymen, like Phil Hiatt. Against some of them there is impossibly credible evidence; against others, hardly anything at all.

The real takeaway here, though, is that despite using questionable means to questionable ends, Mitchell can present literally no evidence of his key claim that "the use of steroids in Major League Baseball was widespread." This assertion is stated flatly, as fact, but his entire report contradicts it.

Mitchell at one point, for instance, references several lurid estimates of how many ballplayers have used steroids, ranging from 20% to "at least half," to illustrate the scale of the problem. These are sourced to major league players and a coach. On the same page, though, he notes that a 2003 survey test revealed just five to seven percent of players were on steroids. Perhaps more to the point, in his own investigation he found credible evidence against 77 players—less than 2% of nearly 5,000 who took the field from 1988 to this year, roughly the time under consideration. Even allowing that Mitchell cannot be expected to have discovered every player who was using drugs, if six times as many players were using as he was able to discover that would still represent less than a fifth of the alarmist estimates he cites.

At some point, when you have spent tens of millions of dollars looking for something without finding it, you should consider that this may be because there was nothing to find. This possibility, on evidence of this report, simply never occurred to Mitchell.

A good word for a public document that draws conclusions directly contrary to those implied by the evidence it presents is propaganda. This is what Mitchell's report reads as, and what it essentially is. Most of it is taken up by dreary recitations of evidence collected against the 77 accused and by a tendentious reading of baseball's recent history with drugs that notably lacks any coherent perspective on the decades-old problem of steroid use in pro sports. (Football coaches were forcing players to gas before there was a National Football League.) It reads like a company history.

The history is easily dismissed, as it essentially presents baseball's establishment as trying to do the right thing despite being stymied by the evil players again and again. The problem, in this telling, is that the owners have simply been too virtuous for their own good, that if they'd just not been so nice they would have been able to nab the missing 48.5% of drug-addled players that their very expensive investigation wasn't able to find.

In this report, every foul caricature of the professional baseball players is given a full airing. "In 2000 or 2001," reads one typical anecdote, "a visiting clubhouse manager working for the Minnesota Twins found a used syringe on top of a trashcan in the visitor's clubhouse."

"[O]ne former player told of annual players-only meetings during which teammates reminded one another that any personal information they learned during the season needed to be kept 'in the family,'" reads another ominous, and notably anonymous, claim.

Baseball players do not, in fact, casually leave dirty needles laying around the locker room or reenact scenes from bad mob movies, but that is the impression this report leaves.

Meanwhile, owners and the commissioner are forever unilaterally implementing this, or proposing this or that tough new curb on steroid use, only to be held back by the union. Owners are treated as being complicit in the drug scandal, but in the way of being too cautious and too deferential to a union that is depicted as warning players of pending random tests.

Mitchell doesn't seem especially interested in how the testing program's privacy protocols were broken, leaving the government with access to the results of purportedly anonymous tests, but he seems very interested in "the code of silence" among ballplayers.

This is basically propaganda, information given in a way meant to persuade rather than describe. So are those parts of the report that blame the suicide of teenagers on baseball players using drugs. So is the famed list, the main effect of which is to vilify the players, painting them all as tainted by the sheer accumulation of detail. This are not reasoned arguments or sound bases for policy.

Perhaps the majors really were infested with steroids. Perhaps there were a dozen Balcos, a hundred Kirk Radomskis. But to imply or even say this is not the same thing as proving it, no matter how much attention is paid to you or how distinguished and esteemed you are.

In the end, though, to pay too much attention to the report's general dodginess is to miss its significance entirely. Earlier this year, in a letter to Mitchell, Representatives Bobby Rush and Cliff Stearns threatened to federalize drug testing in baseball if Mitchell's recommendations aren't carried out. Commissioner Bud Selig, unsurprisingly, announced today at a press conference that he would, in fact, act on all Mitchell's recommendations. And Representatives Henry Waxman, Tom Davis, and John Dingell lauded the report and announced hearings into the scandal, at which they will no doubt insist that the players and owners find a way to do what Mitchell has deemed they should do.

This farce has played out before, in the war baseball fought over its collective bargaining agreement earlier this decade, and then as now there is a level on which the issue isn't policy, but the intrusiveness of government involvement. Why should anyone care what Rep. Waxman has to say about steroids or competitive balance? Who cares?

The inherently bizarre spectacle of the commissioner vowing that baseball ownership will bow to federal pressure to carry out its own recommendations would be bad enough, but the nature of those recommendations turns farce into debacle. The Blue Ribbon panel at least forwarded vaguely plausible proposals; Mitchell's main point is a call for a greater reliance on "non-analytical evidence," by which he means hearsay and circumstantial proof, in determining whether a player is violating drug policy. This is a basically insane idea. He also wants baseball to set up an internal affairs shop (a good idea, actually), surveil player mail, test draft prospects for drugs, cooperate more with federal law enforcement, and set up a worldwide, year-round unannounced testing program capable of catching out players in dozens of countries in any season, at any time.

And here, finally, is why Mitchell's complete lack of credibility matters so much. These radical measures would completely reshape baseball's labor landscape. An insistence on implementing some of them could lead to a strike. And they were written by a member of management and former senator who (surprise!) insists that baseball management and the federal government be given more power over players in the name of combating a threat his report doesn't even prove exists.

Corrupt in conception, inept in execution, this is in general a vile report. What decency there is in it comes from, of all people, Andy Pettitte. The ostentatiously religious Pettitte, who deserves and will receive a rousing ovation the next time he takes the mound at Yankee Stadium, will be scorned by many as a hypocrite, but according to the second-hand accounting of this report, he decided to use HGH because he thought it would "speed his recovery and help his team." And what could be nobler than that?

Every one of Mitchell's recommendations can be enacted, down to his insulting insistence on better player education (as if adult ballplayers were children, completely unaware of what drugs can do to their bodies), and they will do nothing to address the fact that players are competitive people who do drugs because they help them win. No amount of money, no politician, and no commission can or will ever do anything at all to change that.

tmarchman@nysun.com