The Mitchell Report

It's been analyzed everywhere by everyone who could possibly write about it. I, for one, am not really up for reading 40-plus pages of stuff when I could get the summary everywhere I looked yesterday. People are damning every player, trainer, official etc. that was named in report. That's fair. But should everyone be THIS up at arms over the Mitchell report? I don't think so. I wasn't too shocked about any single name on the list.

The only name close to shocking me is Roger Clemens, a personal hero in fact. But the speculation had already been thrown around before. The old conspiracy theory that Clemens started his ritualistic taking-a-few-months-off thing was actually a secret suspension from the league — trying to cover the ass of one of their greatest players ever. This will tarnish his legacy a la Barry Bonds but Clemens isn't an ass to the public like Bonds is most of the time. How this will play out, we'll see...

One thing I do know for certain is that for a guy on some sort of juice, Gregg Zaun should have a lot better numbers.

I've got the feeling that, while this will hurt the game, some of its' best players and the record books, this is not as bad as people think it is. Even in the last few years, every major North American sport (except the impeccable NFL) has suffered a far worse blow. The NHL lockout, the NBA referee scandal and even WWE's Chris Benoit tragedy are far more crippling than this. The thing is that everyone already suspected a lot of the players named. The confirmation isn't nearly as jarring as the initial accusations to me.

And who would've ever thought that Jose Canseco would come out of all this looking like a good guy? He arguably started this whole snowball effect and could, in a way, be credited with cleaning up the sport now. How delicious is that irony?