It’s almost comical to me, sitting here watching the poor cats on the ESPN TV feed try to put this Mitchell Report into perspective.
From Steve Phillips explaining away his plight as a general manager of the Mets and being unable to do anything about his suspicions of players’ steroid abuse, to John Kruk admonishing everyone who did it for cheating the game, to Peter Gammons and Karl Ravech (who clearly have a personal relationship with Roger Clemens and Andy Pettite) looking downright funereal, it’s an absolute circus.
What names will be on the list? What other “suspicious” characters will NOT be on the list?
Jose Canseco has now posted up at the media center in a fur coat, smiling and taking pictures with admirers as he enters.
That’s where we are folks — even the guiltiest of guilty and the rich of rich and cheating-ist of the cheaters are still legends. It’s almost a slice of Americana idol worship gone mad.
These guys cheated the game. They cheated the fans. They cheated the history of the game. They made millions upon millions (if not BILLIONS of dollars) never to be returned, and they basically stole it from you and me while we worshiped at their altars and cheered their “long balls.”
Seeing the evidence mount — from the Tom Boswell reports 20 years ago through Bud Selig’s stupid quotes in 1995 to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s phony chase of Roger Maris in 1998 — it has now all come home to roost.
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And the “honorable” Sen. George Mitchell now just wants it all to “go away.”
The past is the past.
Riiiiiiiiight!
Ken Caminiti is dead. Mark McGwire is outed. Barry Bonds looks like he’s going to jail. Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada, Andy Pettite and the entire “Mitchell Report Posse” from today’s finger-pointing will forever be known as “cheaters.”
And you just know that over the next decade, players from coast to coast will be dying, getting ill or growing old with the prospects of whatever damage they did in their 20s and 30s that will come back to haunt them and their formerly Adonis-like bodies well into their middle and old age.
Doubt me? Just check off the list of professional wrestlers whose lives were lost during the last decade from the abuses of the 1980s and ’90s.
I’m getting some popcorn. It’s gonna be a long day and night. There ARE 400-plus pages to read.
As Charley Eckman always said: “It’s better than the movies.”
Merry Christmas, Major League Baseball.
