Mitchell Report Retort

I guess the biggest question I had after reading the Mitchell report on Steroids and other peformance-enhancing substance abuse in Major League Baseball (and yes, I read the whole damned 400+ pages of it--- but it was like a college term paper: triple spaced and 13-point font) was: so what?

For a league that has seen scandals ranging from cheating, throwing games, racisim, and gambling absorbed as part of it's history am I truly expected to believe that a few players taking performance-enhancing drugs is the biggest crisis this sport has ever faced? That it's a crisis so large that with everything else going on in our country Congress still feels the need to intervene? (and don't try arguing with me about what a "few" players means when the report itself estimates that the numbers of "users" over the time frame reported did not exceed 7% of the MLBPA union... I'd be willing to bet a true survey of at least casual marajuana users would clobber that number easily.)

For a sport that has labeled itself in the past as being the Great American Past-time; and has seen a growth in revenue and popularity that few expected after the strike in 1994 I ask what is really so truly horrible; so un-American about what these people are doing to themselves; if they understand the ultimate consequences. Trust me-- I would have never considered using HGH or any other performance-enhancing drug. But then again, I was raised differently; and some might say, better than that. But, for Congressional intervention to be deemed necessary? It's almost comical if it weren't so damned expensive to Joe Q. Taxpayer.

The suggestions that allowing this is akin to encouraging the same kind of use in teenagers is vaild to a point; but I've got to believe the soon-to-be exponential increase in tragic and early athlete deaths will put a curb to this. It will only take time- the same way we've finally seen a decrease in alcohol-related deaths in teenagers; albeit 20 years after M.A.D.D. was created.