More Lee Cobb Than Ring Lardner, Jr.

When I was in sixth grade, a donut shop opened across the street from the elementary school. It became habit with my friends to visit this shop before school started and spend our lunch money on breakfast. Of course, this often meant that we would not eat lunch.

The school, our first government, enacted a policy to protect us from ourselves. They expressed concern at us crossing RR12 and not eating lunch and forbade us from going to the donut shop after we had been dropped off in the morning.

We felt it was none of their business what we did with our money before, during, or after school before, during, or after being dropped off. Despite their concern and the new policy, we continued to cross RR12. Instead of going as a group, we would only go in rotating groups of three; one kid would be left on the school side of the street as a lookout to warn the other two of school administrators.

One morning, a teacher became suspicious of one of our friends, as he was just hanging out by himself in the parking lot; he was told to go inside and he did. Without our lookout in place, the other kid and I were busted bringing several dozen donut holes and chocolate milks across the street. Mr. Shand told us we had two options: tell him who else was involved and get detention or become more familiar with the business end of his paddle.

Nothing makes me sicker than a rat; it also wasn't the first or last time for me to get licks.

Some two dozen years later the Mitchell Report was released and still, nothing makes me sicker than a rat. I, however, like the rest of the sporting community, went straight to the red meat: the named names.

I still am not sure what to make of the report.

Sure, steroids in professional sports creates a false illusion of talent, skews statistics and records, and ultimately creates heroes of the perhaps less-deserving.

Granted, major league baseball, and all other sports, need to be cleaned up; I long for the day when the only juice in athletics is a V8. However, it is not the government's job to coerce the cleaning of a private institution (a recreational one, nonetheless) played by people who knowingly cheat, managed by people who know the players knowingly cheat, and governed by owners and union leaders who know the players knowingly cheat and who know the managers know their players knowingly cheat, but still distance themselves to provide for the greatest amount of plausible deniability.

Being America's Past-time does not give Congress sufficient jurisdiction to threaten to revoke MLB's tax-exempt status if they don't comply with Congress' public relations campaign.

My major problem with the Mitchell Report: it's about twenty years too late. You want to clean up the major leagues of tomorrow? Start with the minor leagues today.

Don't put Dykstra, Caminiti, and Canseco on the list. That's like keeping Al Capone's name in the Black Book.

Don't give me names of journey-men who have played for ten different teams in the past six years. Giving me the name of some Player-To-Be-Named-Later doesn't do anything to clean up the sport.

And don't give me names of All-Stars based on idle gossip, at worst, or hearsay, at best. And when you do jeopardize someone's induction into the Hall, you better first catch him with a syringe in the buttocks.

Furthermore, is this list exhaustive? Am I supposed to believe that since a particular name is not on the list (Sosa, McGuire, and the two Rodriguez's, for example), that person is clean or has never been suspected or talked about?

Because if the problem is 86 players using steroids over the past fifteen-plus years, we got no problem.

Last, am I able to question the obvious conflict of interest that exists when an executive of a major league franchise (whose team is the reigning champions and has won two World Series in the past four years) issues a report and associates their rivals (who haven't won a World Series since 2000) with the largest number of named steroid users? And is it just coincidence and fortune that the only two players named from the reigning world championship team allegedly used steroids before joining the team and are no longer on the roster?