DEC

14

December 13th was the darkest day for baseball since 1921 when the Black Sox trial was held in a Chicago courtroom. Yesterday Senator George Mitchell finally released the long awaited report he had been compiling for over a year and a half. To me the biggest revelation was that Roger Clemens was included on the list. Of course he has denied using steroids just like he denied it when Jason Grimsley first mentioned his name as a steroids user. It is strange that only Barry Bonds is mentioned more in the report than Clemens if Clemens is truly not guilty of using steroids. My personal opinion is that the player's union and the owners share the blame for the escalation of the steroids problem. Bud Selig more than any one person deserves the blame for ignoring the problem. It may have been a combination of him wanting to help his fellow owners line their pockets as fans poured into the stadiums to see their beefed up steroids laced home run heroes hit balls over fence that would have previously been long outs and him not wanting to rock the boat with the player's union. I think Selig and Fehr both need to hand in their resignations for their part in the proliferation of steroids in major league baseball. Both men acted stubbornly protecting their interests as the owners were counting their money while player's union saw the players on steroids winning more than their share of MVP awards and the higher salaries that went along with the upward spiral in their home run totals. Fehr scared the players into not cooperating with the Mitchell investigators even though he may not have told them not to cooperate in so many words. He scared them by telling them they may face legal consequences if they talked to Mitchell investigators. David Justice is one of the surprise names on the list along with Fernando Vina an ESPN analyst for Baseball Tonight. I was also surprised to see Mo Vaughn and Rondell White on he list. It would be interesting to know the year that the players pu...

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