Mitchell's Report Proves Nothing - Selig's Time Should Be Running Out

After months and months of build-up, former Senator George Mitchell's report was disappointing to say the least. Half of it was already common knowledge to anyone with half a brain and the entire "investigation" should be thrown in the garbage because it was done in more haste than a high-school student scribbling down their homework before class.

How could thousands of players from the major and minor leagues, scanning at least the past six years been completely and accurately covered in a several hundred page document?

20 months of research and investigation, millions of dollars spent and what came out in the Mitchell report?

Players that everyone knew were attached to performance enhancing drugs were said to be involved - very few surprise players were in there.

Wow, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are the poster boys in the report - that's a real surprise. There names have only been out there since the investigations started and even before that as they got better with age.

But look at who and what their sources were - A clubhouse attendant, a strength coach, and cancelled checks. Wow, that makes me trust this report, how about you? Give me a break.

We are going by here say by untrustworthy people - people who are in trouble themselves for distributing illegal drugs to players - why should we take their word for anything?

Who says that what is in this report is true? Yes, we suspect many of these players are or were taking something, but where is the cold hard facts? There are none!

This report was a mockery spending more time making awareness of how bad steroids and performance enhancing drugs are to a person's body than actually finding out who the actual rule breakers were and how they got these drugs.

There is a reason Mitchell spent so much time on this and saying that there needs to be a better way of testing - it was because he could not prove anything, so he just stated the obvious.

Now this joke of a report can harm players' chances to get into the Hall of Fame or just continue a stellar career. It hurts their pride, it hurts the game, this was a lose-lose situation.

Now, after Commissioner Bud Selig hired Mitchell to do all this work, spend all this time and money, and tarnish the game worse than it already has been by all these allegations, he comes out preaching integrity of the game and how all players should be playing on a level playing field, saying as long as there will be cheaters, they will need to have regulations.

Wow, you think there are players trying to get an advantage? No kidding. Is he joking with these comments? I hope he is because otherwise he is more of a fool than anybody ever would have thought.

Now Selig hasn't only hurt many players pride, but he is insulting the intelligence of us - the fans, speaking as if we had no clue as of to what was going on behind closed doors.

Selig is talking about potential punishments handed down - but again, based on what - there are no facts except for those who admitted to taking performance enhancers. Every other player here is only allegedly linked. How can you punish someone for an allegation? You can't.

So, Selig wants to preach about integrity. Where is his?! Before I get to his integrity, I have an allegation for Selig. He is allegedly the worst commissioner in the history of any sport. he allegedly (although I think this is much more than an allegation, as we all knew what was going on) knew about the steroid problems all along. He allegedly (again, more than an allegation) pretended like he didn't know something was going on because he wanted to save his backside as he saw fans coming back to the ballparks after the 1995 strike, and it was a case of if he didn't see it, it wasn't happening. Where was HIS integrity then? Tell me!

If anyone deserves the most blame it is Selig. With this "investigation" - I don't even want to call it that - Selig made a mockery of the game, a mockery of the players, a mockery of himself and I feel he wants to reprimand players for their actions. I think he should be the first to be reprimanded by being fired immediately.

This is an unfinished "investigation." To bluntly put it, this was done half-assed. I don't care if it would have taken another 15 years to complete - do a real investigation, not just throwing in names of alleged players, but of players who through much more than 20 months of "investigating" that they have the facts on.

And are you trying to tell me that only 86 players were using performance enhancers? I don't think so. Another joke by the Mitchell investigation.

Chances are, I bet approximately half the ballplayers were and are using something. So, when a real investigation is done, then we can all take it seriously. Until then, we should continue to think what we thought all along and that is to speculate that many of these players are using performance enhancers - nothing more and nothing less than an allegation or speculation.

If anyone takes this report for fact, then they need to have their brain examined. If the 20 months of "investigating" was not long enough - which it clearly wasn't - then continue a real investigation where you have real evidence to support your claims on all the players, not on some of the players, and not on the alleged players, but on the players that were using it. When they can show 100% accuracy, then they can have another conference and another big report to look at with players names on it, and the whole nine yards.

Until that day comes - which it won't - nothing has changed about the game other than tarnishing a lot of players careers, some who are innocent and as I said before, tarnish the game more than it was when it was pure allegations and rumors were just swirling around.

Can Major League Baseball PLEASE rid themselves of this incompetent commissioner and hire someone who can actually bring integrity back to the game and make the proper judgements? This is obviously not something Selig is capable of doing.

The only way to begin the restoration of the integrity of this great game is to take it's biggest fraud of all; Commissioner Selig - or hopefully soon to better known as former Commissioner Selig.