Mitchell Report hits

The Mitchell report came today and honestly, I’m underwhelmed. There were a few big names, but it’s mostly the names we expected. The only name I didn’t expect to see was Andy Pettitte, but all of the other big names are ones we’ve heard before.

Roger Clemens….its not a shock, because we’ve heard his name mention.

Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, Gary Sheffield, Eric Gagne, and Troy Glaus are names we’ve heard before. I was thinking we’d see some names come out of nowhere.

Roch posted earlier that a leaked report came out saying that Johnny Damon, Nomar, Jason Varitek, and Brady Anderson were named. Turns out their names were not in the report and he retracted the post. That’s what I was looking for, but all we really got were the names we already knew, some medicore players, some has beens, and some never weres. No big whoop really. It does show there’s plenty of players using banned substances, but it seems there’s nothing new here. Most of the names we know (cept for us O’s fans) are safe. Maybe I’m getting a bit conspiracy minded here, but I feel like a lot of the big names were protected.

Here’s your Orioles (mostly ex-O’s) that were listed

Brian Roberts, Jay Gibbons, Larry Bigbie, David Segui, Rafael Palmeiro, Jack Cust, Jason Grimsley, Miguel Tejada, Jerry Hairston, Tim Laker, Kevin Brown, Gary Matthews Jr., Gregg Zaun, Howie Clark, Todd Williams and Kent Mercker

(names from Roch’s blog)

Only Roberts and Gibbons are now current O’s, for now anyways. I forgot some of these players were ever Orioles. Kent Mercker, Kevin Brown? The surprising thing is how bad most of these players are or were. Todd Williams? How bad would he have been if he hadn’t used performance enhancers? Howie Clark? So much for them helping every player.

Seeing Robert’s name is disheartening, but it was expected. Gibbons….well, we saw that coming. Miggi, our former franchise savior, well….we knew that was coming too.

It’s sad for the game that this stuff has to hit, but I think the problem is much deeper than this. Hopefully the buzz that this causes will put the gears in motion to cut out all the cheaters, not just the disappointing list we’ve gotten today. In a way, I’m glad not a lot big names were mentioned. That’s just the delusional fan in me thinking that most players are clean. The realistic fan in me though knows that there’s a lot more players than the motley crew we’ve gotten here.