Why is Congress so focused on Clemens?  Alan Watson, Jack Cust and others named have also denied allegations made in the Mitchell report.  

I'm sort of annoyed you lumped in the Mets getting a high priced free agent in with Clemens and the steroid scandal. C'mon with the ADD.

If baseball really wants to credibly end the steroid era, adopt a simple rule: if a team's player is caught using steroids or other illegal drug, force the team to forfeit all gams that season in which the player appeared.  There is a logic to such an approach (the player cheated after all) and no player would want to face his teammates after getting caught.  End of problem.

"It is clear that Congress has Roger Clemens in its sights. The esteemed George Mitchell, a former Senator, has been challenged over some of the findings included in his report to baseball commissioner Bud Selig on the steroids era in the sport. Congress is sticking up for one of its own."

I get so tired of reporters who hold baseball as some sort of second requirement of or for life.

"Well, there might be water on Mars, but we won't know if there is any chance of life there until we find baseball."

These are the same people who turn a blind eye to the sport's blemishes and patent absurdity (no salary cap, no market balance, no parity, rampant cheating, etc.). Steroid abuse was widespread in the league, even for years when both the league and the players' union were aware of the problem. Years when the reporters knew, too, but gave the league and the players a free pass because they play the same game that those reporters grew up loving.

Only, that game of their childhood is gone. Murdered. Lost somewhere in the greed, corruption, and collusion of both the league office and the union. The league earned the accolades of a potently offensive game where balls flew out of parks in bunches, of records pursued and overtaken, and of singular iconic figures drawing record attention.

Don't tell me they had nothing to gain from blindly ignoring the steroid problem, and don't tell me they were doing all they could to root out the problem.

The Union protected the mega-salaries of those iconic figures, not to mention the clubhouse filling players who only made it up from AAA ball on the prick of a needle, by dragging its feet on a testing policy and enforcement terms. It might be one thing to argue about privacy rights with regards to the frequency of testing, but it is completely different (and indefensible) to argue for less-stringent punishment and enforcement. Steroids amount to cheating, and cheating, no matter the sport, no matter the competitive contest, cuts against the spirit of competition. Cheating is antithetical to fairness.

Don't tell me that they didn't have something to lose if they let a respectable policy go into effect. Don't tell me they didn't do everything they could to prevent exactly that.

Instead, we were left with a policy that most doping agencies laughed at. Worse, MLB was left with severe blow-back that spread the problem through minor leagues like an infection. By keeping the problem from being addressed head-on, the League and the Union created a situation where many players in the minor leagues were faced with the need to inject themselves to get ahead. Couple with that the laughable penalties if they were caught (and the low chance that they would be caught due to the way that testing was carried out), and you can see what pressure there might be on a player struggling to support his family, knowing that if he got into the next level he would earn a whole lot more.

Instead of addressing the problem, MLB and the Union spread it. They made it worse. And then they hamstring the Mitchell investigation by not giving it power to compel the truth (MLB) and by not speaking to it at all (players).

But never fear! The reporters are here. The steroid problem isn't so bad, they say, never explaining that their definition of 'bad' would only be invoked if the steroid problem amounted to there being no baseball at all. Like babies enthralled by a hanging mobile, the reporters are easily distracted by the start of a new season.

Oooh, shiny.

And so, we get gems like this:

"It is clear that Congress has Roger Clemens in its sights. The esteemed George Mitchell, a former Senator, has been challenged over some of the findings included in his report to baseball commissioner Bud Selig on the steroids era in the sport. Congress is sticking up for one of its own."

Right. Nothing to do with MLB being a multi-billion dollar industry, trading on its integrity with its paying customers. Nothing to do with the years of absolute flat-footedness displayed by the league and the union in dealing with the problem of performance enhancing substances. No, none of that. This is just the Congress standing with a cocked hip, declaring, "Oh, snap! No you did'un!"

Don't think that what the reporters want slips by the public. Any way the investigation goes, MLB suffers. Reporters (and more broadly, those making their livelihoods from the game in some form) want to demean the hearings. They want the hearings to go away.

If the investigation determines that Clemens lied and has taken HGH and/or steroids for the second half of his career, then the MLB brand is tarnished. Clemens is the iconic pitcher, dominant in ways and over time that require extra-sport comparisons to put in perspective (Dale Earnhardt and Jack Nicklaus come to mind). To have the dominant pitcher and dominant hitter (Barry Bonds) both damaged by the steroid scandal would be devastating to the league that built itself back from declining, post-strike popularity on their backs.

On the other hand, if Clemens' story holds up and he didn't take any illegal substances, then the Mitchell report comes off as a flawed look at the steroid era. Once again, the MLB and the union will be seen as only having made the token gesture, ultimately empty, towards reconciling the problem plaguing the league.

It is no wonder why those who live off the game (or who love it to the point that they are blind to the problems) just want the issue to go away. They want to tout the Mitchell report as the final word, then put the report on the highest shell in the farthest corner, never to be discussed again.

Who has time to discuss Clemens or the Mitchell report when spring training is about to start? Hmm, what records will fall this season?

Ted used the word "preoccupation" related to the government's interest in Knoblauch.  If you look at this second round of Congressional Committee hearings on steroids, Senator Arlen Specter's comments on Spygate, and the San Francisco U.S. Attorney's office's questioning of so many athletes in the BALCO case, I think the word should be "obsession" rather than "preoccupation."  This is a democracy and our citizens and particularly our journalists need to question our government's priorities, its waste of time and money, and its "obsessions."  But nobody seems to be questioning the government's "obsession" over professional sports, especially when there are so many real problems to deal with.  Why is that?

Referring to Barry Zito's contract with the Giants as the "largess of Zito’s deal", was uncalled for Mr. Robinson.  You sound jealous of Zito and Santana.  Come on, be more professional, dude!  None of these MLB players are stealing anything from these club owners.  That's what you mildly are suggesting, in my opinion.  It is the benefits that come to players that produce and are beneficiaries of a confluence of factors  -- the latter being largely out of their control.  The death of the reserve clause was a great thing.  Secondly, I back players signing for whatever the market will bare.  Why?  Because the owners always cry poverty, yet refuse (still) to open their books to the players association.  The only thing that will hold multi-year contract down is if the owners can prove their bottom line is shrinking.  They refuse to do so by showing us, the public, their books.  [With these networks like YES growing each year-- I don't think they can prove poverty, either].

The factors out of the players control are things such as these.  Who need starting pitching?  Who has more than they need?  Does that particular owner with good starting pitching really want to maintain a competitive team or not?  [The same applies to position players].  The bottom line is this, in my opinion.  A player having a good years (or series of years, in a row).. has not control over the executive decisions of baseball club management / owners.  Therefore the confluence.

Nice attention grabbing headline....one that might sell a bunch of papers (or in this case get a bunch of views and add revenue) but in reality what Knoblauch has to say might not support the trainers claims.  Then what?

Interesting. Not the column, but the fact that I wrote a response to this column last week, here in the comments section, and it still has yet to be posted. Could it have been that I took umbrage with the glorification of baseball at all costs?

The lengthy reply, which laid out my frustration with the 'baseball must be defended at all costs crowd' (interestingly, the same crowd who makes their money in and around the game). To these people, I wrote, baseball is like the second requirement of life:

"Well, we found water on Mars? Well, we can't know if there is life there until we find baseball, too."

In this vein, we get this gem here in this blog:

"It is clear that Congress has Roger Clemens in its sights. The esteemed George Mitchell, a former Senator, has been challenged over some of the findings included in his report to baseball commissioner Bud Selig on the steroids era in the sport. Congress is sticking up for one of its own."

Certainly, Congress can have no interest or powers of oversight. Baseball is only a multi-billion dollar industry trading on its integrity and the sense of fairplay. Congress should give MLB a pass and trust in the league's well-organized and historically effective doping policy.

No, much more likely that they just want to single out Clemens and "protect one of their own."

The "baseball-mom-and-apple-pie" crowd (in that order) need the Mitchell report to go away, and to that end they downplay the report and the lasting impact of the steroid era. They erroneously claim that the steroid era in baseball has ended. They try to sweep the findings under the rug, off-handedly referencing how few players actually talked to Mitchell, or how Congress is just "looking out for one of their own," or how the Mitchell report is a symbol of all that MLB is doing right about the problem.

The truth is, this crowd needs the congressional hearings (and the report itself) to go away. Why? Because if the hearings go forward and the allegations against Clemens are upheld, then the findings of the Mitchell report are reinforced, and it is a major black-eye for baseball (the dominant pitcher of the recent past is as much of a cheat as the dominant hitter of recent past, if not all-time). On the other hand, if the allegations are dismissed, then the Mitchell report loses what credibility it has, and MLB (the game, the sport... the "american past-time") will be open to attacks that they still have not addressed the problem, and that the Mitchell report was a flawed exercise in irrelevancy.

Much better that the report simply stand, written but unexamined. Enacted but not acted upon.

Baseball, a sport with no salary cap, with limited revenue sharing, and with teams still able to buy championships, is not the sport that these writers grew up with. The great irony of this situation is that these writers, in trying to look past the steroid problem and downplay the Mitchell report, are doing more to tarnish the game than they think they are doing to defend it.

So, I submitted a much longer reponse to this blog once already, much in this same vein, and it was not posted. Like I said, interesting.

I agree that Santana's performance is a whole lot better than Zito's, but to the point of negotiating a contract worth double? Just because the Giants showed fiscal irresponsibility in their contract with Zito is no reason to believe the Mets should do the same.

Barry Zito isn't worth half the cash he has been dealt. a playoff choker, he will only hamper the Giants for years to come. The ace of the staff is Matt Cain.

When Zito's deal is brought up it is always in the context that he is supposedly overpaid.  Perhaps he is, although the reason is not that he is not an ace-level starting pitcher.  It is rather that a pitcher of his caliber is most valuable on a contending team, or perhaps on an 85 to 88 win team that needs one more piece to put it over the top.  Barry Zito is not as valuable on a team like the Giants that is loaded up with position players who all seem to hit .260 with 11 home runs a year.  

Of course 126 million over 7 years is a lot of money, but it is only fair to ask how much money the Giants will fetch over these same years from the various revenue streams (tix, TV, internet) that the MLB and its owners have shown great proficiency in milking.  I am certain that the Giants would not have given this kind of a contract to any player if they did not have a reasonable expectation that their investment would be repaid.  

Of course Zito could blow out his arm in a year and the deal will look even worse.  But player acquisition in any sport is at best an educated gamble.  The Giants made an aggressive move for Zito, and if they can upgrade their hitting this move will truly pay off.  

why is the United States Congress so interested in baseball players???? shouldn't they be using my tax dollars for something that is worth it.  I have loved baseball since the day I was born.  Let the players play and leave them out of Congress.  It is a waste of time and money.  Every dairy and meat eating person in this country has HGH in them.  We inject it into our cattle to produce more and more frequently.  Shame on the Congress.  Talk about something that matters.  It's not like this country's engaged in a war or the economy is in a recession. no, we just want to mess with baseball players.  This is RIDICULOUS!!!!!!!!!!!

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