Angela Winters on Mitchell Report Fallout

The black moderate blogger writes: "I watched about 15 minutes of sports yesterday, which is 10 minutes more than I usually do, because of the Mitchell Report. I wanted to know what people are saying. This is what I got. It's not complete. It's just one report covering a few clubhouses, so there is probably more and it isn't fair just to punish the ones in this report. There will be no punishment because [it is] all circumstantial evidence. This could be a turning point in baseball if the league will actually take the action they said they would. MLB Commissioner Selig pretty much called the player's union to the floor for a fight."

She continues her commentary: "One other interesting note. The addition of Roger Clemens has really floored a lot of people. He's a super huge baseball star and certain Hall of Famer. As one sportscaster on PTI pointed out, we're going to see what a lot of these reporters are made of if they don't go after Clemens in the same way they went after Barry Bonds. They are on the same level as far as representatives of the games and record breakers. I personally think Barry gets most of the flack because he's a jackass, but if they aren't as hard on Clemens, you know what the accusation will be, right?"

My response: I rolled my eyes yesterday when Commissioner Bud Selig claimed that baseball has the most stringent drug testing of any professional sport. Puhleeze. Almost any other professional sport has far more stringent drug rules than baseball does. In track & field, you test positive and there is a two-year ban for the first offense. More positives, and it is four years or even a lifetime ban. The tests are random, and they don't alert folks a day in advance like they used to do until recently in baseball. I also rolled my eyes when he claimed that baseball is creating a test for human growth hormone. First of all, such tests already exist. Second of all, human growth hormone is almost old-school nowadays.