Baseball to Blame for Mitchell Report

The names of the players that are being released in the Mitchell report will be at the heart of the news coverage. We love a sensational story. The naming of names. A who-dun-it.

It's really too late, of course. Who dun it, dun it. Baseball opened itself up to the possibility of widespread use of performance enhancing drugs by not lifting a finger to stem the tide when chemical labs became just as important as an off-season workout regimen. That was a long time ago now. And so it pays the price with another day of bad news. We should be talking about the coming season. Trades. Free agents. Teams holding their 'winter warmups' will have reporters coming around to ask steroid questions of the guests instead of talking baseball. Don't shoot the messenger. It's a hot topic.

Who's to blame? The players, sure, for trying to gain an unfair edge and putting their bodies at risk. But when there's big money at stake--lottery money really--it's human nature to grab any advantage you can to preserve a career or maybe lengthen one. Baseball's executives should have seen what was happening a decade ago and gone public. Embarrass the players union into going along with a testing program that had some teeth.

The NFL goes merrily along, making gobs of money with only an occasional news release about players doing things they shouldn't. No one ever talks about steroids. It seems to be a daily occurrence in baseball. The Mitchell report only makes it worse.

I guess we have to give them credit for finally trying to do something to rid the game of this stuff once and for all. Unofortunately because it was allowed to go on for so long (and still is), we'll never stop talking about it. History has been changed by the new home run records. We'll question every record set from the mid-1990s to until such time as we can be reasonably assured no one is taking anything that will allow them to play like Superman. That it was allowed to happen falls squarely on the shoulders of baseball.

A Long Night's Baseball Journey into Day

It's shaping up to be a beautiful fall morning.

If only I could tear myself away from the baseball playoff game.

I'm not sure if Major League Baseball is trying to dominate the coveted 1 AM to 3 AM time slot or turn itself into some sort of telethon aimed at cushioning the blow from the upcoming release of George Mitchell's steroid report.

"If you'll watch just one more inning. Buy one more product...we can save baseball from impending doom. Won't you help?"

Friday night's 11-inning National League championship series game ended at 1:49 AM.

Central time.

Even without the extra frames, it would have ended at an hour that had even left coasters yawning.

Saturday night's ALCS game continues as I write this just past 1:15 AM Fenway time. Trot Nixon's go-ahead base hit was met with silence in Boston. It was met with snoring across the rest of the country. The game started just after 8:30. The ninth inning ended just past midnight. Cricket matches don't take this long.

Since 2004, the average Red Sox post-season game has lasted over four hours. Bud Selig and the crew that decides how to balance television exposure with common sense expectations clearly still leans toward the money. They talk about how late starts and later finishes are making it impossible for tomorrow's fans--the 8 and 9 year-olds of today--from staying up. When the grown-ups can't stay up, you really have issues.

The sport's three-week showcase is tip-toeing the balance beam of irrelevance when even die-hard fans can't stay awake to see how things end. News organizations measure public interest with the water cooler test. What are people in offices talking about the next morning? You can't talk about what you didn't see.

Deadlines mean the score won't even make the Sunday paper. No worries. Baseball can run promo after promo during the Fox football coverage on Sunday afternoon to hype the excitement of both series.

That is, if they aren't still playing tonight's game.