Day Of Reckoning: OPEN THREAD
by Texy
2007 December 13 at 10:26 am
We’re about 2 1/2 hours away from the Mitchell bombshell – and already reports are trickling out about who may or may not be on THE LIST. This will be our open thread for today- feel free to stop in and post your thoughts or rumors or whatever else you feel like. Cries of anguish, squeals of schadenfreude-listic glee… whatever.
Just about every credible news source is reporting that Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte will be on there- which is surprising to just about no one.
Deadspin got ahold of a “list” – whether or not it’s THE LIST is very debatable. It looks awful fishy. We’ll know soon enough, so in the meantime, here’s that list:
Manny Alexander, Brady Anderson, Rick Ankiel, Jeff Bagwell, Albert Belle, David Bell, Rafael Betancourt, Dante Bichette, Barry Bonds, Aaron Boone, Bret Boone, Milton Bradley, Paul Byrd, Mike Cameron, Ken Caminiti, Jose Canseco, Ozzie Canseco, Ramon Castro, Roger Clemens, Wil Cordero, Paxton Crawford, Johnny Damon, Wilson Delgado, Lenny Dykstra, Carl Everett, Kyle Farnsworth, Ryan Franklin, Eric Gagne, Rich Garces, Nomar Garciaparra, Jason Giambi, Jeremy Giambi, Jay Gibbons, Troy Glaus, Juan Gonzalez, Jason Grimsley, Jose Guillen, Jerry Hairston, Clay Hensley, Felix Heredia, Jr., Darren Holmes, Wally Joyner, Darryl Kile, Matt Lawton, Robert Machado, Mark McGwire, Raul Mondesi, Damian Moss, Guillermo Mota, Trot Nixon, Abraham Nunez, Jose Offerman, Rafael Palmiero, Neifi Perez, Andy Pettitte, Mark Prior, Albert Pujols, Juan Rincon, Brian Roberts, John Rocker, Pudge Rodriguez, Alex Sanchez, Scott Schoenweis, David Segui, Gary Sheffield, Sammy Sosa, Fernando Tatis, Julian Tavarez, Miguel Tejada, Ismael Valdez, Jason Varitek, Maurice Vaughn, Matt Williams and Kerry Wood
BREAKING: Here’s the report: http://files.mlb.com/mitchrpt.pdf
I am pulling double-duty giving you the information as well as posting it on my site.
what i find to be the most interesting thing about Gagne and Donnelly’s involvement in the report is that Theo and his staff knew of their alleged use and didn’t do anything about it..
Caroline i agree with you. Roberts probably should not be in the list because of the heresay factor.
I’ll play the role of devil’s advocate here, and it’s not from a lack of love and affection for Tek, but the story here, for me, is how pervasive the use of performance enhancing substances are in baseball.
While our beloved Red Sox are spared in this report (and there’s some conflict of interest on Mitchell’s part as Director for the Red Sox), it doesn’t mean they’re not using something, just that no evidence was uncovered or corroborated during this 20-month investigation.
To wit: http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/
Now, no throwing things at me, please.
You are a man of many talents.
And it’s disturbing to see those emails from Theo quoted in there about Gagne… and all of those concerns were summarily ignored anyway.
First off, I disagree that the Red Sox were “spared” – look at Ian’s list, tons of current and former Sox were named. Theo’s private emails were quoted in several places. Mo Vaughn was named.
The reality is: lots of Orioles were named (Bigbie as the source) and then several Yankees (McNamee as the source)- with some Dodgers thrown in. There weren’t a lot of guys named from MOST teams, not just the Sox.
HOWEVER, I think it’s very obvious this thing is by no means complete. That doesn’t mean everyone else is innocent- it just means the Mitchell committee didn’t have a Bigbie or a McNamee to rat on the other clubhouses.
16 current or former Yankees, 16 current or former Orioles, and 15 former Red Sox players.
Oddly enough my list doesn’t have Gagne and Donnelly on it. Big oops on my part.
What’s shocking to me is that there wasn’t a lot of Mets on there given that Radomski worked for them.
Number of Yankees from the 2000 World Champions roster named in the report? EIGHT.
That’s in interesting point. The rumors had the Mets implicated. Such is the nature of rumors, I suppose.
It’s wikipedia, so it’s not the most reliable source, but this seems like a good summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_players_named_in_the_Mitchell_Report
Curt’s thoughts on THE LIST are here:
http://38pitches.com/2007/12/13/the-most-explosive-24-hours-in-the-games-history/#more-141
-or just go to 38pitches.com and click the link
The wiki article is pretty accurate. There’s so much to read in the report you might miss a name or too. If you thought someone might be on there, just do a search for that player like most of us have.
Let the fallout begin with MLB and the MLBPA battling over drug-testing again.
Below is a list of the 89 players, retired and current, mentioned by name in Mitchell Report.
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071213&content_id=2325070&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
TG, thanks so much for hosting our little support group!! Have I told you lately how awesome your blog is?
Jason, I’m sorry I had even a moment of doubt. Please, please continue to be worthy of our trust.
The most interesting comments all day were those from the MLBPA guys. They were LIVID.
And you are VERY welcome, fc- it was fun. Well, as fun as stressing out about whether a bunch of grown-ass men stuck needles in their butts full of juice can be. :)
brian roberts? you’ve got to be kidding me. pedroia could kick his ass. his name shouldn’t be in there.
I have an interesting question that I posed on my site as well.
How many of the list were or are Boras’ clients?
It was really interesting that the MLBPA guys tried to sound like the victims during the entire thing saying they haven’t even read the report. Sounds weird?
Also who would have guessed that Paul LoDuca had such a major role in this. I mean it is reported that he even ordered HGH for Gange in LA. Never saw that one coming.
The current & former Boras clients I see on the list are:
Rick Ankiel
Barry Bonds
Kevin Brown
Eric Gagne
Scott Schoeneweis
Gary Sheffield
Ron Villone
Just realized this…
Where are Sosa and/or McGwire?
Didn’t they pretty much start the need to investigate this a few years ago? They weren’t even mentioned once.
McGwire is ALL OVER the report. His name appears 46 times.
Sosa isn’t mentioned. But, again- just because someone wasn’t mentioned doesn’t mean the Mitchell group forgot about them, or that they cleared their name — it just means that none of the informants and/or evidence they saw implicated that person.
I’ve had the overnight to ruminate about this. I’m glad that there are no current (or real former) Red Sox heroes represented on the Mitchell list. However, since I wasn’t born tomorrow, I amhighly confident that there are many players who used who are not identified on this list. I guess that is why “the list” itself is so troubling to me. Lots of speculation that this keeps Clemens out of the HOF entirely. I don’t know how an acknowledged “partial” list helps baseball more than it hurts the players named, particularly when the evidence is primarily of a heresay nature and there will be little opportunity for the players named to clear their names. Don’t misunderstand, I am not arguing that these players did not use PEDs – for arguments sake, I’ll allow that they all probably did – but Mitchell’s list and his request that we need to move on from here and not “punish” these players because there is sufficient blame and culpability to go around (I think fans deserve a slice of pie too) stand at odds with each other. It isn’t, IMO, possible that the named players will not be punished by history for their inclusion in the list and yet moving on will in effect grant amnesty to all those players lucky enough not to have had relationships with the trainers who talked.
And this may get me flamed (dons asbestos suit) but for the exception of some of the really high profile stars, baseball is a sport with an extremely long season populated with lots of journeyman players with fairly short earning years, for whom I am sure the risk to benefit ratio of using PEDs (and lets be real, aside from the cheating aspect – these drugs can have serious risks and lasting effects) can be likened to anorexia and drug use among models – it may be the only way that you can keep your job and meet the unrealistic expectations of your employer and/or the public/fans.
I suppose this sounds like being an apologist, and I don’t mean it to. I agree with Mitchell’s hypothesis that the conduct of those that used PEDs and banned substances caused harm to the careers of those players who did not, and perhaps that is enough to not care “so much” about the loss of reputation being suffered by those named now. But I think owners, management, cities and fans reaped the benefits of the risks taken by these players that they “nudge nudge wink wink” didn’t know “anything” about – it is wrong to rest the blame chiefly on their, albeit, enhanced, shoulders.
I’ve been waiting for this since the initial “list” was leaked:
http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/baseball/red_sox/view.bg?articleid=1050929