Nothing To See Here, Officer

Good call on connecting the Mitchell report to corporate internal investigations involving the "veneer of legal proceedings." Those investigations always seem designed to ward off prosecutors with the old "don't worry, we'll punish ourselves much worse than you could ever punish us" defense.

In many ways, the Mitchell report is much worse than your average internal investigation. Outside law firms conducting internal investigations at least have a weapon with which to force cooperation -- participate with the probe or the company will fire you and, in some cases, not pay for your legal defense. Of course, this power to compel is limited -- the people running the company aren't about to threaten themselves with termination and the law firm isn't about to coerce the people signing its checks -- which is why all internal investigations reach the same conclusion: "it was entirely the fault of the guys we just fired."

Baseball's investigation was in a position even weaker than that. The union told its players that they didn't have to participate in the investigation, and next to nobody volunteered. Similarly, there was no incentive for management to participate, much less to implicate themselves (say, didn't the teams hire the trainers who supplied the drugs?). The investigators thus lacked either the subpoena power or the ability to contractually force individuals to give testimony. Baseball's internal investigation -- perhaps in an attempt to infuriate everyone -- ended up making management look feckless, the union shady, and the results of the report questionable at best.

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On an unrelated note, shouldn't the report actually *increase* Barry Bonds' chances for the Hall of Fame? I mean, he was the best hitter of his generation (maybe ever) and he set all sorts of offensive records. It's hard enough to do that against regular pitching, but he did it against pitchers who were, apparently, all on steroids. (Same argument in reverse for Clemens.)