Today, ESPN Radio is going to air Senator George Mitchell’s press conference on steroids in Major League Baseball live (2pm EST) and hours of commentary on the Mitchell Report afterwards. I’ve had a bad taste in my mouth for years, but have held off on my indignation until they disclosed the Report’s findings. Shame on the players who cheated, the Players Association for defending the cheaters while they mocked the game, and the owners and Commissioner’s Office for allowing this crap to happen.
I’m reminded of the following interaction in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby:
“Who is he anyhow—an actor?”
“No.”
“A dentist?”
“Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.”
“Fixed the World’s Series?” I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I remembered of course that the World’s Series had been fixed in 1919 but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people—with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
“How did he happen to do that?” I asked after a minute.
“He just saw the opportunity.”
