The Mitchell Report and Major League Baseball: Chicken Soup for the Steroid Era Soul?

"Don't waste your hate on something you don't love." -- Jack Nicholson

Joltin' Joe, say it ain't so! What a sad day in baseball - and baseball history.

But this wonderful-waste-of-a-witch hunt does absolutely nothing to ease my mind as ESPN continues to pound this issue into the cold, hard, ground of mindless media mania.

Some players cheat, some players skate free, the baseball owners and unions bury their collective-bargaining heads in the shifting sand, and the fans always seem to suffer in the end, do they not? (McEditor's note: Makes you appreciate Grady Sizemore, Pronky Pronk and The Funky Bunch, even more, don't it, Tribe gang? Feel the vibration!)

But, in regards to such "talents" as Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire ...or otherwise, it all seems to go back to a favorite Irish proverb of my people: "You can't polish a turd."

And, oh yeah: "Cheaters sometimes prosper..."

Tell THAT to George Zipp: Somewhere Abner Doubleday is rolling over in his Wrigley-enhanced, foil-lined, grave!

Are these guys (alleged steroid abusers) wrong for using HGH (or any other illegal substance) to gain an "unfair advantage" amongst their peers in the game of baseball? Absolutely.

Does Major League Baseball (as a whole) need to crack down on this abuse and do something to save "the integrity" of our national fascination, baseball? You betcha!

Is this "report" anything more than a semi-retarded waste of time and money in the grand scheme of things? Perhaps.

But all great debates aside that would make a Robert Redford movie blush with angst, I think I speak for at least some of the fans of baseball when I say this: WHO CARES!

Well, a hearty "WHO CARES!" with an asterisk (*), I suppose. Sadly, as fans of the game of baseball, our only crime is that we care ...we care just a tad too much.

Yes, the game of baseball needs to get tough and clean up it's act and, yes, some good in all of this will hopefully get younger athletes to reconsider using steroids during the span of their sports careers.

But beyond that, I'm really not interested in the finer details of how some ball boy "shot up" Roger Clemens in the ass with performance-enhancing drugs. That was then ("the steroids era") and this (for better or worse) is now.

This "report" (like everything else in the national media) is rather "New York-centric" to a Midwest fan of a team like the Indians, to say the least. So (ultimately) it seems, as a fan of the Tribe, all yellow brick roads must lead back to Cleveland, do they not?

Regardless, in the swelling sea of all this ugly nonsense, isn't it worth a tip of the hat to note that these CURRENT crop of Cleveland Indians - my Cleveland Indians - are performing at such high levels without any pulse-pounding, performance-enhancing drugs?

All allegations, innuendos, and Paul Byrd's aside: How amazing is it that most of these Cleveland players in the game today (like Grady Sizemore, C.C. Sabathia and Travis Hafner, to name a few) are playing the game of baseball (at such exceptional levels) without cheating and the help of any illegal advantage? I say most, because of Rafael Betancourt getting caught with steroids back in 2005.

And, hey, maybe YOUR favorite little baseball team makes you feel the same way - all tingly inside - without the use of any artificial stimulants, additives, or otherwise.

So, goodbye Yellow Brick Road: It is CLEAR to me, at least, that these players (with nothing more than their hard work and dedication to the game) need to be recognized. I hope the fans of the Cleveland Indians (and baseball as a whole) notice this fact as well.

Please, George Mitchell, inject that into your report, won't you?