It's hard to understand exactly why Selig commissioned the Mitchell report. It doesn't, all by itself, "clean up" the game. It also does not produce much new information about whether baseball players (as a group) are using performance enhancing substances. I knew it. You knew it. And Bud Selig knew it.
Still, did McGwire and Bonds hit all those home runs because they bulked up, or because they stopped swinging at balls out of the strike zone?
I think Selig needed the report so he can put pressure on the union. Selig, by himself, can't do that. However, if he gets a report from a respected statesman, who holds a press conference, the media can jack it up to the Nth degree and the public can finally confirm their worst fears about doping and the baseball record books.
Now we have a 400 page report, available for download on MLB.com, where we can all see the proof of what's been happening. In case you don't download it yourself, don't worry...this is made for media stuff. They'll be all over it for weeks...interpreting, and probably misinterpreting.
It's nothing more than a media play engineered by Selig to make the union move on a testing policy. Why else would Mitchell name the players? In his press conference, he said he didn't think the players should be prosecuted for past conduct, unless Selig found a particular situation to be egregious. So why not just tell Selig and Fehr the names on the sly, and leave it out of the report? The new names are not integral to understanding the history of the problem, the investigation or the recommendations.
I guarantee you that 9 out of 10 journalists began their review of the report by hunting for player names. How many started by looking at the recommendations section? The names should draw attention away from the fact Selig and the owners did not push hard enough for substance controls before they did.
In his press conference, Mitchell said he hoped everyone would focus on the recommendations more than the player names. The best way to ensure that was to leave the players names out of the document.
The real downside is that I can no longer remain hopeful that some of the Royals will begin using performance enhancing substances.
