Mitchell Report Fallout: Part 2

The second point that Dan Patrick touched upon on was the media's role in this ordeal.

Patrick spoke about how he's lost many friends, in professional sports, because he had to tell it like it is. He then questioned whether the newly accused players, via the Mitchell Report, would be handled in a similar way as Barry Bonds.

Naturally I don't think they would because Bonds isn't a nice guy like a lot of the other guys named. But as a journalist I know that it's tough to tell it like it is sometimes. When I started covering JMU sports, I quickly realized that the athletes are your best friend when they are winning. You don't have a reason to write anything negative and they love seeing good things about them.

The same can be said about all of the baseball writers and reporters like Tim Kurkjian, Buster Olney and Steve Phillips of ESPN. These guys get to talk to the Major League players on an every day basis. And when players like Roger Clemens are still putting up great numbers in their twilight years — and are glad to talk about it — it's easy for the reporters to overlook the "truth" behind their "friends."

It is important that we hold these players to what they really are — cheaters. I'm not trying to be a complete skeptic and say everything in that report must be correct, but at the same time these players put themselves in their current positions. On the other hand the players shouldn't all be grouped together because some probably did a lot worse than others.

When listening to Kurkjian yesterday and his reaction to Pettitte's statement, I felt like he was missing the point to a certain extent. I agree with Kirkjian that using HGH for two days to get back to the team isn't that big of a deal, but the fact that Pettitte is a nice guy doesn't really matter.

Hearing the ESPN analyst say that reminded me of what Patrick was saying about reporting this responsibly. All of the players that are guilty of using steroids and HGH have been living a lie. Plenty of people think Roger Clemens is a nice guy, but are we going to treat him lightly after reading the Report and knowing that his career resurgence happened at the same time he began employing his trainer, Brian McNamee?