John Dowd, the Pete Rose investigator, was right. When the Mitchell Report on steroids went public in December 2007, he remarked “no teeth”.

The teeth are chomping now.

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and now A-Rod have seen the Hall of Shame.

The real heroes in the steroids scandal are Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, two reporters from the San Francisco Examiner. Thanks to their book Dark Shadows, Bud Selig ordered an investigation and gave George Mitchell the keys to the car.

His two year drive ended with plenty of speed bumps.

“Since being appointed by Commissioner Bud Selig in March 2006 to run the investigation” Globe writer Stan Grossfeld wrote, “Mitchell has taken more heat than Jason Varitek catching Jonathan Papelbon.

Mitchell is still dodging chin music, as steroids plaster the headlines.

True, the Mitchell Report took plenty of flack.

Cries of a whitewash, clouded judgment, and unfairness filled the airways.

Some believed his prior connection as a Red Sox director ruined his independence, and others like Rusty Hardin, the Rocket’s lawyer, said “There’s never going to be any charges filed. There’s no vehicle or venue to challenge these allegations”

But, before you torch the Report, let’s give some credit to Mitchell. How would you handle no subpoenas, Player’s Union, drug enterprises, and baseball’s dirty little secrets?

Like gambling, drug enterprises are hard to expose. As the Dowd report concludes about gambling, it is ditto for drugs.
“The difficulty for the investigator lie in gathering corrobative evidence” the Dowd report says, “… gambling is designed to leave few tracks and provide alibis to the participants.”

Remember Pete Rose’s 1989 denial and his confession fourteen years later?

Mitchell’s report had one foot in the future and one in the past.

It identified over 80 players that had tie-ins to steroids. Mitchell could have easily issued the report without names. But, that’s like Obama saying, “We tortured, we changed the policy, but sorry guys, no indictments, we are moving forward. “

Fuck ‘em! Accountability is the key.

In my opinion, George Mitchell gets high marks for putting a face to steroid use.

“The Mitchell Report changed the dialogue about steroids in baseball,” Tom Verducci writes, “moving it away from a living problem to more of a history lesson.”

Not exactly.

With the A-Rod revelations we’ve got more history to learn and legal issues to unravel. Mitchell’s report was the tip of the iceberg. A-Rod was only one of 103 players that tested positive for steroids.

“But before we get self-righteous, ex-Cubbie Doug Glanville writes, “we should look in the mirror and ask ourselves whether exposing A-Rod, or any player for that matter, is worth stepping all over rights, privacy, confidentiality and anonymity.”

Sports writer Bob Ryan also weighs in about the BALCO affair.

“By indicating that she (US District Judge Susan Illston) will very likely exclude prosecutorial evidence that would have been very damning to the case against the beleaguered slugger, she has done right by our system, I suppose.” Bob Ryan says. “That’s the sort of Constitutionally-driven protection you or I would want if you or I were being hounded by the feds for some alleged transgression, especially if the upshot of it all would be hard time. So Barry Bonds, as odious, smug, arrogant, and, I’m sure most baseball fans outside of San Francisco would agree, guilty as he is, still has a right to a fair and proper hearing, according to the laws of our land.”

Well, Maybe?

Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams make a good point.

Dark Shadows “would not be possible without the help of many people — people who are whistleblowers in the truest and best sense of the term”

Once again, baseball has plunged into the murky waters.

All I want is the fucking truth.