Re: The Mitchell Report
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/13/sports/baseball/13mitchell.html?th&emc=th
Baseball Braces for Steroid Report From Mitchell
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Mark McGwire refused to answer questions during a congressional hearing in March 2005.
By
DUFF WILSON and
MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Published: December 13, 2007
George J. Mitchell’s report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball, to be unveiled Thursday afternoon, will be highly critical of the commissioner’s office and the players’ union for tolerating the presence of drugs throughout years of abuse, a person who has read the closely guarded report said Wednesday.
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- Mitchell has been battling the union during his 20-month investigation, but sharp criticism of Commissioner Bud Selig, who hired Mitchell and is paying for his investigation, would be more unexpected and would seemingly prove Mitchell’s claim of independence in this endeavor.
Selig, the commissioner since 1992, and
Donald Fehr, the executive director of the players’ association since 1986, have scheduled separate news conferences after Mitchell holds a briefing. The three sessions will take place within blocks of one another in Midtown Manhattan.
Mitchell’s report will total roughly 300 pages, and also have substantial attachments, according to the person who read it. It will pull player names from three main sources: Kirk Radomski, a former
Mets clubhouse attendant who pleaded guilty to steroid offenses in April and says he supplied players with performance-enhancing drugs from 1995 to 2005; the Signature Pharmacy investigation led by the Albany County district attorney; and one other source that the person did not make clear. The bulk of the names are believed to be from Radomski.
The person who read the report also said that information from Brian McNamee, a former
Yankees strength coach who has worked as a personal trainer for
Roger Clemens and
Andy Pettitte, had been provided to Mitchell’s investigators. It was not clear if McNamee spoke directly to the investigators, or if information he provided is in the report.
In a conference call Wednesday to discuss his 2008 contract with the Yankees, Pettitte said that he was not working out with McNamee and did not know if McNamee had spoken to Mitchell’s investigators.
Over all, Mitchell has interviewed scores of former players and club executives. But the report will state that there is a lot of information the investigation did not uncover, the person said, making it unlikely that baseball’s steroids issue will be put to rest.
That person and one other person familiar with Mitchell’s findings said the report would name more than 50 active and former major league players who are linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The person who read the report said among those named would be the winners of Cy Young and Most Valuable Player awards.
The report is also expected to call for beefed-up testing, but it apparently does not address the use of amphetamines.
Baseball officials felt the report was harsh when they read it this week, the second person said. The sources were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the report.
The players’ association is expecting to be attacked for doing what it says was nothing more than what it was supposed to do: advising players of the harm that could come from talking to Mitchell. Partly as a result of that advice, only one current major league player,
Jason Giambi, is known to have cooperated with the investigation, and then only after Selig threatened to suspend him for tacitly acknowledging steroid use.
A former prosecutor and United States senator, Mitchell was appointed by Selig to conduct the investigation in March 2006.
Informed Wednesday that the Mitchell report would pointedly criticize the commissioner’s office,
Fay Vincent, Selig’s predecessor, said, “Very interesting.” In a telephone interview from Florida, Vincent declined further comment until he read the report. “I do have expectations, but I’m almost certain to be proven wrong,” he said.
Vincent had tried to crack down on steroids in his last year as the commissioner. In June 1991, he sent every major league club a memorandum saying all illegal drug use was “strictly prohibited” by law, “cannot be condoned or tolerated” and could result in discipline or expulsion. Vincent specifically highlighted steroids in the memo.
The next year, Selig became commissioner. Through the 1990s, even as newspapers reported that as many as one in five baseball players used steroids, Selig and the union played down the issue. “If baseball has a problem, I must say candidly that we were not aware of it,” Selig said in 1995.
In 2000, The New York Times reported steroids were rampant in baseball, but a baseball spokesman said they “have never been much of an issue.” In 2002, after a Sports Illustrated cover story said baseball “had become a pharmacological trade show,” the commissioner and the union finally agreed on a testing policy.
Random tests would be done in 2003 without penalties. If more than 5 percent of players failed the tests, penalties would be imposed starting in 2004, which is what happened. The penalty for a first offense was treatment, and for five violations, a one-year suspension. That policy failed to satisfy critics.
In 2005, as a congressional hearing was approaching, Selig and the union reopened the collective-bargaining agreement to toughen the penalties to start at a 10-day suspension and public identification of a first offender.
At the time, Selig cited a survey showing steroid use in baseball had fallen to 1 to 2 percent in 2004, compared with 5 to 7 percent in 2003.
“I have an enormous responsibility as the commissioner to clean this thing up,” Selig said then. “The fact is, we had a problem. The fact is, we’ve done something about it. We have done now as much as we can do.”
But when a House committee subpoenaed the actual policy documents, it found they were more lax than had been claimed. The penalty for a first offense was actually a 10-day suspension or a fine. If a player was only fined, he would not be identified.
Outraged members of Congress blasted Selig and Fehr. Senator
John McCain wrote, “I can reach no conclusion but that the league and the players’ union have misrepresented to me and to the American public the substance of M.L.B.’s new steroid policy.”
The next month, after the televised hearing, at which
Sammy Sosa denied use and
Mark McGwire declined to answer questions, Selig wrote the union to ask for a new steroids policy, “three strikes and you’re out.” It would apply a 50-game suspension for a first offense, 100 games for a second offense and a lifetime ban for a third offense.
Fehr and the players’ association approved the three-strikes policy in December 2005.
Three months later, Selig appointed Mitchell to conduct his investigation.
