The Mitchell Report -- My 2 Cents...

The report finally came out. The long awaited work of Senator George Mitchell has been made public. As a life long fan of baseball here are my thoughts on the matter; in no particular order...

• how authoritative can a report be if there was no one compelled to participate or tell the truth?
• It does not seem fair to "name names" when in many cases there is little more, if anything, but circumstantial evidence. Many are based of the testimony of one person, often with an axe to grind.
• $60 million dollars is a lot of money to spend on what I feel could best be described as a PR event. I could think of lot of good that could have been done with that money.
• was the motive to really gather information, or to appease the public and Congress?
• is it fair to persecute someone for taking something that was either not illegal or banned by the sport officially?
• after all of this work only a select number of names surfaced when during the spring training testing samples of two years ago almost double the number of active players tested positive for "something"
• MLB realizes, as is supported by Mitchell that to punish for what is in the past is silly, and quite close to impossible.

I love the game of baseball. DO I think that measures need to be in place to protect the integrity of the game ? Of course. But I think that the best approach would/ should be to draw an imaginary line in the sand and state that from that point forward everyone is officially on notice. There will always be those who cheat whether in the ballpark, the board room, the pool hall, the back yard pick up game, or even at Monopoly. Lets not let a few bad eggs spoil the whole farm. PLAY BALL!!