After reading the New York Times article “Steroid Report Cites ‘Collective Failure’” by Duff Wilson and Michael Schmidt I began to wonder to myself was releasing the Mitchell report a smart thing for the game? There are names on that list that changed peoples lives forever. Once your name is on that list the image that you had created throughout your entire career is wiped clean. What stood out to me in the article was that not all players wanted to cooperate with Mitchel. One would make the infrence that if you did not speak to Mitchel then you would be guilty one way or another.
“Of all the active players tied to the use of steroids and human growth hormone, which are illegal without a prescription and banned by baseball, only Jason Giambi of the Yankees cooperated with Mitchell’s 20-month investigation. The Toronto Blue Jays’ Frank Thomas, widely known for his antisteroids stance, was the only other active player who agreed to talk with Mr. Mitchell’s investigators.”
During this groundbreaking report Brian McNamee describes in detail how he and Roger Clemens would train and how he would inject steroids and Human Growth Hormones into his body. Which Clemens adamantly denies.
“In the report, Mr. McNamee is quoted describing how he injected Mr. Clemens with illegal drugs at least 16 times from 1998 through 2001. Mr. Clemens, 45, adamantly denied the report’s accusations of his use of steroids and human growth hormone, his Houston lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said in a telephone interview Thursday night. Mr. Hardin said he had been told Mr. McNamee was pressured to give up names or face prosecution by the I.R.S. Special Agent Jeff Novitzky, who has led the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative and Radomski investigations.”
What makes this document a bit questionable is that Mitchell admits that his research was inhibited without the power of the government behind him. He was not allowed to use any sort of subpoena to reprimand any of the accused.
The purpose of this document was to recognize the failure in the system and to fix the problem before it got much worse to the point of no return.
“There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on,” Mr. Mitchell said. He recommended that the players on the list not be disciplined, but instead said that baseball needed to “look ahead to the future” and establish stronger testing.”
Since Mitchell’s report many more players have been disciplined for using steroids. The imperfect Mitchell report was the beginning of the end of the steroid era. With more knowledge than ever before Major league baseball has been cracking down on steroid use. Hopefully in the next few years it will be gone for good.