The Zong

So I’ve been alternately thumbing through the mind-numbing Mitchell Report and sleeping for a few days, all the while trying to ignore all the pundits so as to venture a somewhat independent opinion on the thing. I’ve definitely given up on even trying to decipher how the thing was actually put together, but I can say that if you paid me whatever George Mitchell was paid to do this, I could have probably come up with something a little more entertaining.

As far as I can tell, George Mitchell has constructed a blacklist in a manner that would make Joe McCarthy proud. I mean, I won’t sit here and say that I don’t believe a lot of what’s in the report, but it’s important to view all the allegations in the report for what they are: allegations, rumor, and accusations by people who are facing serious jail time. I’m sure that Mitchell is right that juicing was/is widespread, and that a lot of the players listed in the report are probably dirty, filthy fucking cheaters, but the report is thin on proof and heavy on the kind of shit I might try to include in a report to make it 409 pages long instead of 55.

What pisses me off, really, is that Bud Selig and all of baseball’s managers and owners are left basically unnamed in the report, other than a cursory nod and mild wagging of the finger. Why the hell weren’t the executives investigated more thoroughly by Mitchell? It seems pretty unlikely that they just didn’t know this shit was happening, and like a major flaw in the report that they weren’t asked more questions in general.

That said, I implore the media and baseball itself to give all these accused players the Barry Bonds treatment at every single opportunity. All the cheaters, whether they’ve failed drug tests or not, should have asterisks placed next to every win they’ve ever participated in, and all of them should be forced to testify in front of a Grand Jury. Then, their testimony should be leaked and their local piece-of-shit sports rag should have a couple of shitty reporters salvage their worthless careers by writing a bunch of sensationalist bullshit into a best-selling book. I’d also like all the fans in New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, San Diego, etc. to go find the asterisk signs and syringes that they brought to their games against the Giants the last couple of years and bring them to every fucking game their own teams play for the rest of their lives. I mean, what’s good for the goose is good for your own hypocritical, filthy cheating fucker-filled organization too, isn’t it?

- M.G.