Mitchell Names Clemens, Pettitte As Drug Users...Says "Everyone" In Baseball Involved

Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada and Andy Pettitte were named in the long-awaited Mitchell Report on Thursday, an All-Star roster linked to steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs that put a question mark -- if not an asterisk -- next to some of baseball's biggest moments.

Barry Bonds, already under indictment on charges of lying to a federal grand jury about steroids, and Gary Sheffield also showed up in baseball's most infamous lineup since the Black Sox scandal.

Read more news and blog posts on the Mitchell report on steroids in baseball here.

Comments

[wheelskeepturning]

02:35 PM on 12/14/2007

Its all about the money, for the players, for the owners, for the franchise, for the cities and most of all for all the bookies making millions on illegal betting which encourages all the other entities to get involved. Like a big circle in a circle. The ones getting screwed are the viewers who #1 don't get to see a fair game they have paid to see and #2 the citizens who are taxed unfairly to support these teams. Oh and don't forget the tv endorsements. It just goes on and on. What would we ever do without sports? Is there possible another pastime that Americans could get involved in that would take at least 50 yrs to corrupt?

[colibri1]

02:32 PM on 12/14/2007

I'm already hearing white people hemming and hawing now that white players have also finally been officially found to be using steroids, too. When it was just Barry Bonds and Marion Jones, it was, "Take away their honors! Take away all their past earnings! Fine them so much they'll have to live on the streets! Make sure they're serially sued for the rest of their lives so they're never out of court and always broke! Put them in prison for the rest of their lives! Sic mobs on them! Boooo! Booooo!!!" Now that it's finally been shown what most people already knew, that virtually everyone in US professional sports is on the stuff, a lotta whites seem to be notably reluctant to punish those who share their skin color, "Well, you have to understand, it's a competitive world and you gotta do what you gotta do to compete with all those young bucks ... " But they still want the Black users to be ruined. Sometimes, it seems like everything's a reflexive strategy by whites to get as many Blacks in prison as possible.

[Economike]

02:23 PM on 12/14/2007

Deer Poaching, now there's a sport. Might make a heck of a reality show too. Football could be good, if they randomly handed out stun guns to 3 people on each team, but didn't tell the other team which ones had it. Just some thoughts on improving the national pastime.

[robertlockwoodmills]

02:17 PM on 12/14/2007

Hard to believe some of the comments we're seeing here about Mitchell's investigation. "A
waste of time!" "He talked to a couple of obscure trainers..." yada yada yada

Hey, folks! Kids grow up on baseball. They idolize their favorite Major League players, who make millions for playing a kids' game. All we ask of these multi-millionaires is that they play by a few basic rules, to make the game fair for everyone and to validate the hero-worship that's visited on them. Is that asking too much?

To read some of these posts, it doesn't matter that players cheat. Hell yes, it matters. If kids know Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens can break the rules and make millions in the bargain, where's the incentive for any of them to follow any rules themselves? Why go through school, earn a diploma, and work your way up in business or a profession the honest way? Just cheat, lie, and if you're caught, say "It doesn't matter...everyone else does it."

Have we become so jaded by dishonest politicians and crooked businessmen that we no longer have standards in this country? If our goal is to become the Roman Empire, then it doesn't matter.

[Ginzaman]

01:34 PM on 12/14/2007

It's a complete waste of time. Mitchell is part of managment and on the Disney board of directors. Two players actually talk to him during this investigation. Two years and $24 million later this come out, and why? Because it means nothing. All the owners care about is not losing money with ongoing legal battles, player union battles and more. So all this damage control about, we're concerned, kids don't use steroids is crap and they know it. What about the statute of limitations? Even if there was no rule about steroid use in the player union agreement, they still broke the law.

For the rest of us, if we did this we'd be fired. But because these guys are megamillionaires and can hire the best attorneys in the country, they can get away with this and then laugh their asses off over it. Nice job, George Mitchell.

[EyeWantOneNation]

01:30 PM on 12/14/2007

Interesting...
My husband called me today on his lunch hour, as he always does,and asked what's new in the world? I said CNN this A.M. was pretty much all about the baseball / steroid thing. He said "Who the f*@k gives a s@*t about baseball??" I said "THE CHILDREN!!"

Baseball is an American tradition..Baseball and apple pie, ya know? For these kids in the little leagues and minor leagues, to be seeing the crap their heroes, their icons, are doing, is a shame. Maybe the good that will come out of this, for them, is to see taking steroids is wrong - and if baseball is your thing, you shouldn't be doing steroids to make it big!!

Everything we do should be for the children...I don't care if it means ending the war in Iraq so the American family is kept in tact, and children have a safe, secure home with 2 parents to raise them; or stopping global warming so we have a planet left for our children to inherit; or passing an SCHIP bill so our children have health care. We are not going to live forever...everything we do; here and now; has got to be about the next generation!!

Mitchell is co-owner of a baseball team; he didn't come to the conclusions in this report overnight or with bias.

Sorry...truth hurts sometimes; but it's still the truth and needs to be dealt with!!!!

[nylaw13]

01:19 PM on 12/14/2007

Not being a guy, maybe that is why I simply do not care about this issue. These are professional baseball players who make a ton of money, they are adults, etc. So, I say, who cares and why is so much money being spent on investigating this stuf? Given what is going on with our country and the world, what a waste of time to even pay attention to this nonsense.

[Mishagothe]

01:12 PM on 12/14/2007

Shades of George McCarthy! George Mitchell - A man who clearly loves the sound of his own voice, makes some accusations which for which his SOLE proof is the word of a couple of obscure trainers, bills MLB $21 million for an year long "investigation" which COMPLETELY fails to come up with a level of proof which would even obtain an indictment, never mind a conviction and the House of Representatives deems this worthy of immediate hearings? So what if Oil is $90/barrel, American soldiers are dying in Iraq, the housing market is in a depression, the dollar is rapidly becoming International toilet paper...what we really need to know is - Did Roger Clemens take steroids? This government is so overdue for a revolution! If Clemens is innocent as he claims, I hope he sues the living daylights out of Mitchell and MLB.

[FredFlintsone]

12:41 PM on 12/14/2007

Selig and the other owners are all to blame for this. They all wanted freaks of nature to pound homers over the fence to increase attendance. When the owners fired the comissioner to put Selig in his place, was the day baseball died.
Don't believe a word out of this pompous asshole's mouth in wanting to clean up baseball. He knew this shit was going on for years!

[humuhumunukunukuapuaa]

12:22 PM on 12/14/2007

Gotta love MLB and the media! Acting shocked and surprised as if no one really knew the extent of juicing in the sport!

Fact is MLB, the media and the fans have all known all along and they all willingly turned the looked the other way for the sake of watching Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds hit home runs.

[Economike]

12:13 PM on 12/14/2007

A President who lied us into a war and then commited a laundry list of crimes across the board who is not being held to account by the spineless democratic congress, but thank God, I can look on the front page of every fucking newspaper on the stand and see... A story about a bunch of overgrown adolecents who make a living hitting a little ball with a fucking wooden stick. God Bless America.

[Nommo]

11:52 AM on 12/14/2007

Every did it and every one else knew, or nobody did anything and no one knew that no one did anything which is the same thing and it really don't matter much now if all knew what was going on when it was going on and really--what does it really show but how sick we all are that we would allow all this to happen even as we knew it was not a good thing as we knew when it was happening.
So what the fuck? Now no one is going to learn anything as we will exile to elba some and the rest will either bitch or clam up. It is just baseball and baseball has never been innocent or noble--it is just a game. You are into it or you ain't. But it ain't life, its just an extended roller coaster ride. So when all is said and done, we still have to elect some more officials and take care of such matters as habeas corpus.

[revko]

11:38 AM on 12/14/2007

DRUGS. MEN. BASEBALL BATS.

Didn't Martin Scorsese do this flick a few years ago?

[NotMyPrez]

11:37 AM on 12/14/2007

Never thought I'd see the day an all-star pitcher get's tagged for juicing, let alone many!

"Cheating is a time honored tradition"

How sad it is that true sportsmanship is non existent.

[nomoredead]

11:09 AM on 12/14/2007

A recession.
A bank meltdown.
People dying because of corrupt healthcare cos.
Energy crisis.
Give them bread and circuses.