Roger Clemens was the star of the Mitchell Report. Today he denied ever used any banned substances. He was quoted as saying, "I want to state clearly and without qualification: I did not take steroids, human growth hormone or any other banned substances at any time in my baseball career or, in fact, my entire life." So, he is pretty much calling former trainer Brian Mc Namee, a liar.
I don' t think the Mitchell Report was worth the paper it was printed on. All it did was tell us what we've known for years. There is wide spread use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball. The flash in the report is the testimony of the two, one-time New York clubhouse guys. Don't you think it was convenient that this far reaching investigation didn't reach past New York. The bulk of the dirt came from these two rats. No one else would cooperate with the investigation. Where is the info from the other major league cities. Seems like they only followed info leading in and out of the New York.
Baseball is just trying to get people to focus on the fact that they purposely turned a blind eye to steroids since the late 80's. After the last players strike, performance enhancers made the balls fly out of the parks, that kept the turnstiles spinning, therefore the cash started piling up again. The players union benefited from the boom also. Salaries skyrocketed too. Are there any scouts, GM's, VP's or owners, who ignored the sure signs of drug abuse and went after players they knew were juiced, named in the report? Of course not! You name the players who are suspected of juicing, and get the public to think that MLB and the clubs were the victims here. Of course the players will catch all the heat.
So, now its time to stop the ongoing, made for ESPN drama, Sit the players union down to the table and be proactive in looking for, identify, testing, and punishing juicers from here on. We don't need to look into each and every individual case. Every team had juicers. Pitchers juiced as much as hitters, so the playing field wasn't that slanted. Forget asterisks or footnotes. History will remember that this era was tainted.
