George Mitchell: "We're all human"

It was a long time ago, and we're moving forward.

That's a summary of former Senator George Mitchell's report on steroid use in baseball.

"We're all human, we all make mistakes," the senator told a journalist at his press conference today.

Senator Mitchell said it's his recommendation that everyone look to the future and not at the past.

As we said in May of 2006: "The former Senate Majority Leader is not the guy you call if you want to know what happened. He's the guy you call if you know what happened and you don't want anybody else to find out."

Reporters who glanced quickly at the report said it appeared to be very critical of the players' union but not of the commissioner or team executives. That might have something to do with who signed the senator's check, but maybe we're just cynical.

Unfortunately for Major League Baseball and Commissioner Bud Selig, the Mitchell Report is years too late to contain the steroid scandal to a New York City press conference. Barry Bonds is in the record books and under indictment, two San Francisco Chronicle reporters just sold the film rights to their book about steroids in baseball, and Mark McGwire was rejected by baseball writers when he tried to jab his way into the Hall of Fame.

There are federal crimes and constitutional rights and collective bargaining agreements all standing in the way of confessions and investigations, so the truth will never be known beyond a reasonable doubt.

But the statistics and the videotapes stand silently in front of all of us.

If the fans care, the players will pay a price in reputation and endorsement deals.

If the fans don't care, then everybody made a clean getaway with the cash.

We'll all find out together.

By the way, Alex Rodriguez finally signed a $275-million contract with the Yankees today, the same day the Mitchell report came out (and didn't have his name in it). Judge for yourself whether we were right in the earlier post, "Alex Rodriguez and the big hurry."


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier posts, "Barry Bonds' big asterisk" and "Barry Bonds and the Constitution."

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