The True Test of the Mitchell Report: What Selig Knew
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by Dan Lewis
Tomorrow, at 2 PM Eastern, George Mitchell will hold court at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. He will be revealing his Mitchell Report on the state of performance enhancing drugs (PED) on Major League Baseball. So far, the only eyes that have fallen upon the report outside those of Mitchell and his team belong to officials at the league itself -- officials, presumably, including Bud Selig.
As baseball fans are well aware, Selig's reign as acting commissioner and later true commissioner of baseball coincides heavily with the time period of alleged heavy PED use. Selig ascended to the throne in 1992, the same year Jose Canseco joined the Texas Rangers; two years before admitted steroid user David Segui met his supplied, disgraced clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski; four years before Ken Caminiti roided his way to an NL MVP; and six years before Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa smashed more than sixty homers apiece. When Selig became the head honcho, Barry Bonds was still a scrawny outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
While Mitchell's investigation centered on players, it ran roughshod over the course of twenty months time, interviewing "hundreds" of people. Over that period, it would be farcical to believe that no one -- not a soul -- claimed that PED use was unknown to management and ownership. It would be similarly absurd for Mitchell's interviews to turn up not one person who claimed that, in roughly these words, "the problem was so big, Selig had to have known."
However, it is quite possible that Mitchell's interviews turned up an inconclusive-at-best level of guilt on behalf of Selig, with players and clubhouse attendants (and the like) saying that "it was rampant, therefore Selig must have known", but never providing any real evidence as to Selig's knowledge. It is perfectly reasonable for Selig -- aloft in his Ivory Tower on Park Avenue -- to have been oblivious to the drug use occurring in Texas clubhouses or even in the Bronx and Queens. With day-to-day operations taxing in and of themselves, Selig and his cabinet may very well have not noticed ever-increasing muscle mass.
But that is not Mitchell's defense to offer. Mitchell's report may name up to 80 current and former players, and will likely not absolve the unnamed masses as innocents. More likely than not, it will proclaim that the 80 or so outed ballplayers are a fraction of the drug users -- we just don't know who else was involved. Mitchell has an moral and to a certain extent, legal obligation to report the facts and evidence offered, even if that evidence shines poorly on Mr. Selig -- the guy who tapped him to lead this commission. If even five percent of interviewees suggested that the problem was so large that Selig had to have heard of it, Mitchell has an moral obligation to tell us for the good of the game. If no one, in no way, shape, or form, suggested that Selig had prior knowledge of baseball's steroid problem, Mitchell must spell that out.
A failure to do so is fatal to his Report.
