George Mitchell gave his people what they wanted: Blood.
He ripped into baseball players because they aren’t worth much in his world. Most of them started out at the bottom and the poor have never meant anything to Mitchell. They are just the people he stepped on to become what he is today: A watchdog for a bunch of wealthy baseball owners.
It really wasn’t a new assignment because he has always served the rich. He served them as a United States Attorney and a Federal Judge and a United States Senator. The wealthiest few percent have always been his top priority.
That made him the perfect man to protect the owners and attack the players.
Mitchell spent yesterday afternoon selling his 409-page report about steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in baseball as an “independent investigation.” But there was really no investigation involved.
Mitchell spent most of his time reading and referencing other people’s work. He read newspaper articles and he read Juiced by Jose Canseco and Game of Shadows by Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada and Juicing the Game by Howard Bryant and he even read Gary Sheffield’s book Inside Power.
He should have read Away Games by Marcos Breton and Jose Luis Villegas. It’s the story of Miguel Tejada’s journey through baseball’s Dominican and minor league meat grinder.
Mitchell would have read about a young Tejada enslaved by a system that he enabled as a Senator and exploited as a team executive.
That book would have given him a glimpse of what Major League Baseball really does in the Dominican.
He would have seen 50 players at every academy fighting for their spots so they could keep eating three-meals-a-day for the first time in their lives. And he would have seen them battle for only a handful of opportunities to come to the United States and start at the bottom of the minor leagues.
He would have seen kids willing to do anything for an edge because baseball was their only chance at a decent life. And he would have seen thousands of them discarded like yesterday’s trash.
But Mitchell didn’t investigate the Dominican academy system as one of the roots of the drug problem in baseball. That’s because the owners – the people Mitchell was paid to protect – run and profit from that system and its endless supply of cheap labor.
So Mitchell stood on a stage yesterday and blacklisted Tejada. And he did it with a straight face.
Bud Selig has been selling him as “an honorable man,” but Mitchell presented a report that protected the rich and bloodied the poor and he did it all for money.
That makes George Mitchell the most dishonorable man in the world.
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5 comments:
You squared up that pitch and drove it out of the park. When is everyone in the media going to catch up? Mitchell is a disgusting man and that piece of trash he tried to pass off as a report is a joke.
The more I read of this report the more I agree with you. Mitchell and his work on this report are a disgrace. If he didn’t want to do any work why didn’t he just say no? Don’t sit around for a year and a half and then throw this thing together like a kid working on a school project.
I could have sat at home and read books and newspapers and talked to a couple of guys that the feds already grabbed. This was a poor effort by a man lacking in character.
George Mitchell honorable? I’ll never think that again.
You are right, Donna. Mitchell should be ashamed of himself. Everyone I am talking to is ashamed for him.
You good buddy BARRY BONDS is in JAIL so you trying to defend Tejata My man MITCHELL will have you all in JAIL soon. He will get halfbread Jeter to! RED SOX will WIN EVERY WORLD SERIES!!!!HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
Dear Todd,
At this point I am so glad you are here writing what you are writing because none of the media get it. I used to be friends with Jon Heyman but he doesn't get it. I am so disgusted with the media and with mlb and the union I could scream. I love baseball. I love the game. Shame on all these people.
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