With this column I always try to stay local.  The reason is twofold: first, I don’t think that our local teams and athletes get enough pub, or at least the pub that they deserve.  Second, you can read about national and worldwide sports news on any one of a thousand websites or newspapers, and I’m not arrogant enough to think that my thoughts on A-Rod are better than 1,000 other writers’.

However, after yesterday’s slew of press conferences about the release of the Mitchell Report—a 400+ page document outlining the extent of Major League Baseball’s steroid era and exactly who was involved—I’m inclined to comment.  Preparation for final exams and papers kept me home all day yesterday and I got to catch all of the press conferences, beginning with that of Senator George Mitchell, who produced the report.

He said, in effect, here are all of the people I learned about—sometimes through extortion—that used performance enhancing drugs from 1994 to 2004.  Then Commissioner Bud Selig took to the stage and said, in effect, this is bad and I might punish those players.  Then Players’ Union President Donald Fehr took to the stage and said, in effect, don’t ask me, I wasn’t consulted.

It was a very sad day for baseball, and I don’t know how it can now look itself in the mirror.  All three men went up to the mic and threw their hands up in disgust, when two of them should have taken measures to prevent this a decade ago.  Mitchell spoke about “preserving the integrity of baseball.”  First of all, since when did baseball have any integrity?  Cheating is more a part of the game of baseball than hot dogs.  

Second of all, that integrity has been long gone since Selig made the conscious decision to ignore the rampant steroid use in his league because it was contributing to the Mark McGwire / Sammy Sosa home run race that would bring baseball out of the cellar after the ’94 strike.  So good luck finding that integrity that you’re trying to preserve—I think the last shred went with Barry Bonds, who was indicted for perjury about allegedly lying to a grand jury about steroid use only after he had broken the all-time home run record, when the exact same information was available before the 2007 season.

But the most sickening thing of all—and there were plenty to go around—was the media’s response.  Softballs were lobbed around like a warm-up drill, and not a single reporter managed to ask the only question that is really going to matter.

What happens now?

Let’s hold them accountable.  They dragged their feet through this entire operation—Selig needing years to finally call in an investigator and Mitchell needing 19 months to conclude that doping happened a lot in the late 90s and early 2000s.  I could have told you that in far less than 400 pages, and about an hour.  And in the end, what has changed???  Nothing.

The people at the highest level, with the most power and authority, who knew but did not act, stood up on that podium and pointed fingers at individual players who used steroids in a league with the most lax testing policy of the major sports.  Selig has failed to install effective drug testing techniques and has instituted no plan to curb use in the future.  Sure, steroid testing is secret and more frequent now, but he calmly announced that players have now switched to using Human Growth Hormones, which are, sadly, completely undetectable.

I don’t buy that.  Find a way.  Figure it out.  Leave Congress out of this (sometimes they actually have things to do) and take responsibility.  You’re the commissioner of the most time honored tradition (baseball/exploitation) that this country has, and your legacy will forever be that of the guy who profited by allowing the use of illegal drugs, and forever turned a blind eye.

And shame on the media, the reporters who spent hours dragging those players’ names through the mud without casting the blame at the man who allowed it to happen, and never stopped to think and wonder:

Now what?