This report is going to be a preposterous joke. It is going to be 100% unverifiable hearsay (this guy told me that guy used steroids!) That anyone in the commissioner's office believed this would be a good idea, or have any kind of positive outcome is insane. It is virtually certain that some of the people the Mitchell team interviewed used this process to settle scores, and unless they release ALL of their source data, the report has to be taken as a total work of fiction.

In the short term there will be no winners in this situation, only losers. But, in the long term the fans will be winners because it will bring the entire issue into the light where it belongs. This can be the change point, beyond which lies a clean game.

I think the "change point" referred to above has already come and gone. Public opinion is already that baseball is, or has been, rife with performance enhancers. This report is media fodder, and very little else.

That being said, my personal take is that opinions of teams and their accomplishments won't be affected by the report. Individual players' reputations will probably suffer, but how could I think less of a team's championship with a named player when I'm convinced that the other team had just as much abuse going on (and just didn't get caught)?

If baseball was actually serious, they'd institute competitive cycling style drug testing.

I am a far cry from a garden variety conspiracy theorist, but after reading the report I have to say the case for some pro-Red Sox tinge is kind of laying out there. No Varitek? He's been mentioned so many times in the past, and has undergone the phsycial changes we normally associate with steroid use. I dunno.

I'm not that surprised not to see Varitek on the list because looking at the report, it seems like Mitchell was only able to name the players he could get through a limited amount of trainers, clubhouse guys, etc... Most of the players he names were given directly to him with evidence. I am sure he had suspicions about plenty of other players, but without the evidence, what can you actually do?

The fact that Gagne could be juiced and STILL suck so bad is a mindblowing accomplishment in and of itself.

Actually, this investigation is nothing more than a wash. There was very little co-operation from the players union since they have all been trying to cover for each other.

Suddenly, we are all supposed to believe that Roger Clemens is the one of the few pitchers on steroids... GIMME A BREAK ! His HOF chances have taken a huge hit, though. Wonder what advise Clemens gave Schilling ?

The sport needs to be desperately cleaned up - the regular season needs to be cut down by a good 15 games.

I think that if one has any desire to view this as a thorough investigation, then the techniques used by the investigators is seriously suspect. Essentially, they had a couple of guys up against the wall that they were able to milk for names, and a few obvious leads that they followed up on. Catching people like Clemens, Sheffield, Barry BALCO et al is no great accomplishment, nor is it representative of the scope of the problem.

Notably, management and ownership gets more or less a free pass -- the people who acquired, monitored and traded these juicers are given only a few words to the effect that "it's everybody's fault." It seems likely that Selig likes this report because it creates the illusion of closure without in any way threatening the architecture of baseball. Thus, we get a familiar story: a few bad apples acting without the knowledge or consent of higher ups.

I really think it would be quite misguided to think that the fact that no '04 or '07 Sox were included is exculpatory. If anything, the fact that Theo grabbed Gagne despite strong evidence of his PED problem seems to undercut the idea that owners and managers (and particularly the Sox) were above the fray. I respect Theo's skills as a GM a great deal, and I find it very hard to believe that he was either unaware or that his teams were completely clean.

Ah well, pitchers and catchers report to spring training in about 75 days. Hardly anyone cares about this now, no one will care by then.