{"id":272,"date":"2007-12-13T21:42:12","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T20:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=272"},"modified":"2009-09-26T11:26:58","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T10:26:58","slug":"mitchell-report-released","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=272","title":{"rendered":"Mitchell Report released"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like every other baseball fan, I’m currently skimming through the just-released Mitchell report<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0(pdf).\u00c2\u00a0 I think it’s safe to say that even the A-Rod announcement (finally confirming that he’s signed the biggest contract in sports history with the Yankees) will\u00c2\u00a0be pushed to one side by this story.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Millions of\u00c2\u00a0words will be written about the report over the next few days.\u00c2\u00a0 Two points have struck me the most so far:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. That the way drugs were distributed in baseball tallied with my preconceptions.\u00c2\u00a0 It was very much a case of networks of players who confided in each other.\u00c2\u00a0 If a player wanted access to performance-enhancing drugs, he could find someone who\u00c2\u00a0knew a contact where he could\u00c2\u00a0get what he wanted.<\/li>\n
  2. That the Front Offices knew all about what was going on and were happy to discuss it amongst themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 The quotes from the Red Sox in November 2006 (p.267) are a good case in point.\u00c2\u00a0 Theo Epstein asks a scout whether he has “done any digging on Gagne?” on account of the fact that Epstein knew the Dodgers thought he was “a steroid guy”.\u00c2\u00a0 The scout’s response? “Some digging on Gagne and steroids IS the issue”.\u00c2\u00a0 These comments are particularly interesting when you consider that they obtained Gagne’s services via<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0a trade\u00c2\u00a0in August this year.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Of course, the major talking point is that in pretty much every case of a player being named (from the likes of Roger Clemens to Jack Cust), they\u00c2\u00a0ignored the opportunity to discuss the findings with Mitchell.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 That’s probably to be expected, but it leaves the players concerned open to a whole load of questions that they will struggle to dodge.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Like every other baseball fan, I’m currently skimming through the just-released Mitchell report\u00c2\u00a0(pdf).\u00c2\u00a0 I think it’s safe to say that even the A-Rod announcement (finally confirming that he’s signed the biggest contract in sports history with the Yankees) will\u00c2\u00a0be pushed to one side by this story.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Millions of\u00c2\u00a0words will be written about the report over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4427,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272\/revisions\/4427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}