Steroids and Baseball

Dear A,

The Mitchell Report is finally out. The big question: what next?

Barry Bonds has already been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to the grand jury in the BALCO case. Rafael Palmeiro told Congress, "I have never used steroids. Period." He could be next.

But any criminal charges for steroid use? Unlikely. This report was done, in part, to ward off the specter of criminal prosecutions that arose with BALCO.

When corporations find themselves in trouble, they do exactly the same thing. They hire law firms to investigate the wrongdoing and then provide those findings to prosecutors or attorneys general. This use of an outside law firm provides the company with the veneer of legal proceedings without the annoyance of actual legal proceedings.

The same thing is happening here. A pseudo-investigatory body, without any real authority from a court or legislative committee, has issued a lengthy report on steroids in baseball. And now MLB can point to the report whenever there's a question of another investigation. "Look! See! We've already done one!," it can say.

But it hasn't. Not really. Because George Mitchell and his team only acted as government investigators. They could not act as government prosecutors.

By co-opting the first role, MLB may have circumvented the second.

Love,
Sammy