December 16, 2007
Major League B.S.-ball
Former U.S. Sen. (and current windbag) George Mitchell is on Fox News Sunday, touting his report on steroid abuse in Major League Baseball.
Host Chris Wallace asks him, why not treat the players found to have used performance-enhancing drugs the same way the International Olympic Committee treated gold medalist Marion Jones, when it learned she'd been cheating? The IOC stripped her of her gold medals and deleted her records and stats from the books.
Wouldn't erasing any honors from the record books serve to deter future cheating?
Mitchell responds with this: Baseball players are different from Olympic athletes; it's like comparing apples to oranges. We need to get away from ideas like punishment and retribution, need to move forward in a positive fashion; baseball players are the same as you and me -- I've made mistakes, you've made mistakes, they've made mistakes. We don't need to be punished; we can learn from our mistakes without it.
Hmmm.
Understand those who break rules.
Compassion for those who cheat.
Who are we to judge?
Can't we just move on?
Would it surprise you to know that Mitchell was the Senator from Maine? And a quite liberal Democrat, too?
In addition to everything else, he's a pompous windbag, too. Mitchell couldn't help but throw into the conversation the alleged fact that he'd played a key role in ending Catholic-Protestant violence in Northern Ireland, by insisting that punishment and retribution were uncalled for -- just like in Major League Baseball.
Wait a minute.
Didn't he just say that we couldn't look to how the Olympic Committee treated a drug abusing, cheating athlete, because Major League Baseball is so different?
And yet he holds up a three hundred-year-old religious civil war in another country as showing an analagous way of dealing with freaky big baseball players?
What a dolt.
Sounds like Mitchell is doing nothing more than flacking for a whitewash -- and reveling in the attention he's getting in the process.
Posted by Mike Lief at December 16, 2007 08:09 AM
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Comments
It sounds to me like Mitchell's whole report is based on the statements of two towel boys. It wouldn't surprise me to find that Mitchell's entire "investigation" consisted of four days of interviews with the sort of low-life creeps we see in most drug investigations.
Before we start talking about wiping away records and denying entry into the Hall, we should examine the actual proof. If it is there, THEN we take action.
So far the only benefit of the report is that a few players have made rather limited admissions of experimental use . . . except for the well-known superstar F. P. Santangelo, of course, who conceded that his spectacular career was due largely to hormone use. More excitement will follow, I'm sure.
Posted by: The Little Coach at December 17, 2007 08:11 AM