The Mitchell Report is out. This does pull the covers back a little on what we have all lived in a little denial about. The laying out of details and the naming of names was needed for the blunt reality effect of it. Even the conjecture and innuendo of the differences between accuser said versus what the accused says in retort, is needed. Before it could easily be dismissed as 'the other guy' whoever he was. The anonymous obscurity of its participants masked the extent and significance of performance enhancing drug on the integrity, the competition and dare we say it; the haloed results and records of the game - but by how much?
Likely it is impossible to be measured, just like we can not know if an athlete that did take performance enhancing substances could have been successful and achieved the record without them. I would worry about the true guile of a professional athlete that had taken that route, if that very question didn't echo insistently in their thoughts over and over again. Like the protagonist from Poe's Tell Tale Heart, tortured by this unknowable truism and the guilt of the means and the sacrifice of morality and ethics needed to achieve what they achieved uncompetitively.
Just as in life I think that the report highlights that the instance of use spreads through a social network, not necessarily an evil intent but a clandestine one none the less. Athletes as individuals need to identify and avoid these 'bad influences' and the baseball organization - Owners, Commissioner, and Player's Union needs to dedicate continuous effort and action to identify these social viruses that bring about a negative progress to the general integrity and assumptions of the game. And then have the autonomy and courage to eradicate them from their midst as quickly and efficiently as possible.
I also agree with Mitchell that the past is the past and we need to move on. Negative assumptions and doubt will forever linger with this period of the sport and further investigations will only prove it worse not better than perceived at this point. And hasn't it already been proven significant enough that further and more decisive action to eliminate this threat to the sport is needed. Sometimes knowing it is bad is more than enough to take action without knowing completely how bad.
As for the player themselves, denial and excuse is a likely reaction to accusations, but when does the players effort turn toward proactive acts and taking extreme measures to distance themselves from the remoteness of these assumptions to ensure that their good name - because in life and certainly in baseball, a person's 'good name' still means something - remains untarnished.
And specifically to those implicated in this report: Maybe you didn't take it or maybe you only tried it, but by that you are associated with it and instead you should be working as hard or harder to be as far from that association as you can be - not writing proverbial checks that your character and integrity can't cash.
