This thing is a fucking joke. Uncorroborated rumor or hearsay under oath used to condemn players for something that, in many cases, wasn’t even against the rules when they did it.
The is necessarily just a fragment of the “true” list, but even if we grant that the Mitchell Report is more or less accurate, I don’t see how anyone benefits from this. It doesn’t answer any questions: there’s plenty of deniability for most of the names on the list, and there’s still going to be rampant speculation about who they missed.
It might be too late now, but the answer is (was) so simple: declare amnesty and move forward with the stringent drug testing system now in place.
It was against the law, though. Shouldn’t it be assumed that anything which is against the law is ipso facto “against the rules” for any place of employment?
Bonds is the highest profile and the most egregious example of steroid/HGH use in baseball. He went from a wiry player to a hulking monster in a couple years late in his career. This growth was almost certainly fueled by drugs, and it allowed him to break the two most coveted records in the game. That’s why he is the poster child for the steroid age.
“McNamee traveled to Tampa at Pettitte’s request and spent about ten days assisting Pettitte with his rehabilitation. McNamee recalled that he injected Pettitte with human growth hormone that McNamee obtained from Radomski on two to four occasions. Pettitte paid McNamee for the trip and his expenses; there was no separate payment for the human growth hormone.”
EDITED TO ADD: He mostly sticks to the names that were already known. The only real surprise was Lenny Dykstra, at least for me. Now we know why he always had that big chaw in his mouth. It was steroid impregnated.
I’m sort of wondering now what to think about a player like Pettitte who used HGH once (that we know of) to help speed his recovery from an injury. Is it just as bad as a guy like Clemens who used a variety of steroids regularly over multiple seasons?
Taint is taint, known to use once, makes it a lot more suspiscious that he used more than once. It is good for the Yanks that his won’t earn a suspension, but it sucks for his fans that believed his Aw Gosh was 100% true.