Personally if I were interested in cheating in baseball(which I’m not sure if using the test even bothers me) and who did it I’d much rather read a book like Juiced by Canseco – who had the inside track and is credited as bringing the stuff into the game by many.

The truth(who knows if this report is even telling the truth or used pressure to create false acusations) the WHOLE TRUTH (which the report seems to be lacking) and nothing but the truth (again who knows).

Inge on the otherhand is a longtime Tiger an exceptional third-baseman (I really don’t care what anyone says), a good media personality and frankly not a SMART hitter.

If he were a good hitter then there really would be not much to hang your hat on if you were an Inge hater.

The reason Inge posts (IMO) garner many responses is because most people tend to see one glaring side and ignore the other.

With Crag/Casey gone Inge could be seen as the free-swinging weak spot – which many fans (this site being no exception) – a rally-killer and they thing they must crusade against the Inge lovers inorder to make the lineup more ridiculous than it already was and is.

Where are the posts for/against Pudge??? He didn’t exactly do too well last year.

Go Tigs!

Intent to do harm would certainly be relevant to punitive damages (and might be a crime?).

Libel is a tough burden. Clemens, or any player, has the burden of proving that the report was untrue. The burden is just to prove it by a “preponderance of the evidence,” it isn’t like the criminal law standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The problem is that the report doesn’t explicitly say “Clemens used steroids.” It says “so and so said that Clemens used steroids, and here’s a copy of a check he wrote.” Unless the informant didn’t actually say those things, it’s hard to accuse the report of being inaccurate. And it has to be explicitly wrong — I don’t think innuendo counts.

I would advise the players that they don’t have any legal recourse, although I’m sure there are plenty of money and attention-hungry attorneys who will take on such a case. It complicates things that all of the players were given a chance to talk to Mitchell, but declined.

There is a widespread misconception that the use of steroids and other performance enhancing substances, such as human growth hormone, was not prohibited in Major League Baseball before the inclusion of the joint drug program in the 2002 Basic Agreement. In fact, as early as 1991 baseball’s drug policy expressly prohibited the use of “all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids or prescription drugs for which the individual … does not have a prescription.”

Why do (did) they use steroids?

Let’s provide an example. Let’s say you’re going to trade school along with a thousand other students (with whom you’re competing for a job, carreer, livlihood, etc.). Employers will hire you and pay you according to your performance on essays, tests, and grades — and moreover, on a bell curve, relative to your fellow students.

Now:

If the guy next to you is “getting ahead” and positioning himself, relative to you, e.g. advancing by using a cheat sheet, — and moreover, if ALL, or almost ALL the students and doing the same, where does that leave you? It leaves you on an unlevel playing field for being honest. Moreover, if “cheating” isn’t officially illegal at the trade school, what harm is there in it? Sure, it’s morally dubious, but there is no rule against it (circa 1990s). What to do? Watch the Tajada’s and Sosa’s of the world become stars are receive boat loads of $ and fat contracts while you sit back and “do the right thing?” at the risk of achieving a minor league glory for yourself and bagging groceries in your post athlete years?

I’m not condoning it, just providing a psychology of why everybody — and believe me — in the late 90s it was virtually everybody in the sport — was doing some kind of steriod or enhancement drug. As somebody else pointed out, it was the guys on the Mitchell report who were clumsy enough to get caught.

Didn’t MLB have a rule against steroids on the books since 1991?

What’s the difference between cortisone and HGH when prescribed legally? Whys one against the rules and one not.

A number of these substances, were seen as little more than vitamins, and were widely considered harmless/safe by countless experts in the field at the time. GNC sold a number of legal substances, over the counter, next to your vitamin B12 and protein supplements. A lot of these substances occur naturally in the body, and also naturally in some foods. Over time, new research/data became available on these substances and they were banned by MLB.

To ‘homogenize’ all these radically different cases is grossly inaccurate. Most are unaware of this, but others, simply are uncomfortable when their over simplified view of things gets challenged by truth/reality.