Baseball and Other Coal for My Stocking

Usually in cold weather, when conversation turns to baseball it makes me warm all over. As if pitchers and catchers have already reported to spring training, and the rest of the team are packing final bags and calling cabs for their trips to the airport. Good feelings.

I guess I'm not here to talk about the past. (grumblegrumblemarkmcgwiregrumble)

Heavy sigh. Right now, with the Mitchell Report minutes away, I just feel cold. Has nothing to do with the ice storm.

I really resent this, too!! I just did my Christmas shopping. I should feel warm and snuggly. For crying out loud, I should have hot chocolate flowing through my veins! But nooOOOOoooo, it's ice water, and I'm anticipating someone's sports hero down the tubes once again.

I don't have any sports heroes anymore. I gave that up long ago, I won't even say when because that requires me to remenisce, and that's still too painful. There are those I still admire, NOT getting caught up in celebrity, just what role they play within the team structure, and also for their skills on the field; but it looks like I'm about to lose that too. (Skills are the same, it's the stamina and healing that are enhanced... must remember...)

Today there's a shield the Mitchell Report will remove that will leave certain players, trainers, and management so exposed it will thunder judgement and pain down upon these so-called untouchable heroes and role models that some of the very innocent will be likewise hurt, perhaps irreparably damaged, because the high regard in which they held their hero was so flawed they will feel it must surely reflect on them. I am all for removing that shield, but I am sincerely sorry for the most innocent of fans.

I do believe this report will have far-reaching implications, though I don't believe baseball will be reinstated to the Olympics during my lifetime. (Depressing, that. I'm not yet 40, and I'm in good health.) They need to do more than bombastic reports. They need action. They need full cooperation of the players and the players union. Aha! There's the key! The MLB players union is the most powerful union in the world; without them, there's nothing.

The thing (ok, person) I am most concerned about, however, is former Senator George Mitchell himself. He actually sits on the board of one of the baseball teams. He didn't even recuse himself while he worked on this report! Can you imagine the struggles he had, the conundrums (conundra?) he faced, when the possibilities whirled about his beleaguered head, that members of his own team might play a part in his own report? That must be what Hell is like.

Unless, of course, the team upon whose board he sits isn't really a contending team. That's a fancy and polite way of saying, "But what if his team and its players suck?"

Yeah, well. They don't.

George Mitchell sits on the board of the Boston Red Sox: the team who won the World Series in a straight sweep. They don't suck -- not eggs, not lollipops.

So I'm waiting to see how many of his players end up named in his report. We already know Clemens and Pettite -- 2 Yankee pitchers -- have been named. There's no surprize there. But if there are no BoSox, then we'll know for sure the Mitchell Report is as suspect as Bonds' hitting record.