Mitchell shocks US with drugs in baseball report

AMERICA: In a distinguished public career, George Mitchell has been a federal judge and Senate majority leader and an international peace negotiator, helping to broker the Belfast Agreement in the North.

This week, however, he made his greatest impact yet on the American public when he unveiled a 311-page report documenting the use of performance-enhancing drugs at the very top of the country's national game, baseball.

The report, which followed a 21-month investigation, is devastating, naming 91 current and former Major League baseball players, including 33 all-stars, 10 "most valuable players" and two winners of the coveted Cy Young award. It blames coaches, club owners and the players' union, as well as the sportsmen themselves, for a culture of secrecy and permissiveness that allowed steroid use to become almost routine during the past decade.

"Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades - commissioners, club officials, the players' association, and players - shares to some extent in the responsibility for the steroids era," the report says.

"There was a collective failure to recognise the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on. As a result, an environment developed in which illegal use became widespread."

Nobody was surprised to see Barry Bonds, who currently holds the all-time Major League Baseball home run record, on the list of steroid users. He was indicted last month on perjury and obstruction of justice charges for allegedly lying under oath about his steroid use.

The report's biggest bombshell is its claim that Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, a seven-times winner of the Cy Young award, used steroids during the 1998-2001 seasons. Mitchell quotes Clemens's former strength trainer, Brian McNamee, as admitting that he "injected Clemens in the buttocks four to six times with testosterone from a bottle labelled either Sustanon 250 or Deca-Durabolin" during 2000.

Clemens has denied the claims, but many fans have long wondered how players like he and Bonds continued to break records well past their 40th birthdays. Others have observed skinny players transform themselves within months into massive, hulking mountains of muscle.

However, as one baseball record after another fell during the last 10 years, nobody had much interest in questioning the remarkable performances that delighted fans, put baseball back into the headlines and fuelled a bonanza for club-owners and players alike.

The recent baseball boom began in 1998 with a battle between St Louis Cardinals star Mike McGwire and Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa to break the home run record for a single season. McGwire, who won the accolade, is among those named in the Mitchell report as a steroid user, and his refusal in 2005 to answer questions before a congressional committee about his alleged drug use led to his membership of the Hall of Fame being blocked.

Mitchell makes a number of recommendations, including adopting a transparent drug-testing programme, overseen by an independent entity, which includes year-round, unannounced testing.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said that testers would immediately stop giving 24 hours' notice to players of random drug tests, but he added that other changes would need the assent of the players' union, which has until now resisted more stringent anti-doping measures.

Selig indicated that he would ignore Mitchell's suggestion that no action should be taken against players who used steroids in the past, promising to review each case on its merits.

Neither Mitchell nor Selig have proposed, however, that baseball should take the most obvious step towards stamping out the use of performance-enhancing drugs by handing oversight to the US Anti-Doping Agency. The agency is affiliated to the World Anti-Doping Agency, which promotes uniform international rules and penalties.

Washington Post sports writer Thomas Boswell suggested yesterday that baseball fans are likely to show some sympathy towards marginal players who used steroids to cling to a major league job. The public's verdict would be harsher, however, on star players who already had it all but cheated to grasp more money, more glory and more years in the spotlight.

"How like a superman to be above the law," he wrote. "How close to invulnerability to disregard your own health. How easy to confuse self-sacrifice for your team for a deeper and governing selfishness.

"How easy to mistake the sins of ego for the virtues of sport. Such men would almost be heroic, if they weren't so tragic."