“Look, I regard George Mitchell as a man who has had a very distinguised career, and appears to be a man of great integrity. But he should have understood the appearance of this conflict of interest. He should have known questions like this would emerge. I don’t believe he intentionally set out to name Yankees and ignore Red Sox. But if it even looks that way, given the circumstances, he has to understand he put himself in a position to be accused of lack of ethics.”

I think Stark hits the nail on the head. If the Mitchell Report was to be a comprehensive historical account of the Steroid Era, wouldn’t it be in the best interest of baseball to have as little controversy surrounding the Report as possible? The problem, however, is that Bud Selig and the owners have never cared about conflicts of interest, going back to Selig’s ownership of the Brewers while he was commissioner.

Bud Selig, the owners, and the union should have agreed to bring in somebody outside of baseball, someone with a good understanding of the sport, but no direct connections to it. In the end, we get a bunch of names that MLB can throw around, through the media, in order to deflect blame on those who benefited the most from the Steroid Era: the owners and MLB.

Although Mitchell does have connections with the Red Sox, what is more important is that he has connections to baseball itself. Although it is curious that not one Red Sox player is named, it is more damaging to the sport that most blame continues to be put on the players. Yes, those who did steroids are cheaters and they need to be punished. But although Selig and the owners are criticized in the report, their names do not appear among Clemens’ and Bonds’ in that list printed in the newspapers.

Mitchell and baseball must have known that very few people would actually read the report and that the easy thing for the Average Joe to do is to just read that little list of users. So, although people are told, in the report, that Selig and the owners didn’t do enough soon enough, they get off easy. When asked, “Who are the liars and cheaters of the Steroid Era?,” you have a handy little list to read off of. Sadly and unfairly, Selig and the owners aren’t on the top of it.