Simply put, the Mitchell Report accomplishes nothing. Until baseball moves to year-round, unannounced drug testing for all players at any time, with additional samples to be frozen for a later time when more advanced substances such as HGH can be detected, the sport and its players can never be trusted again. Uncle Bud Selig can pat himself on the back all he wants, and the MLBPA can say “Nu-uh! You can’t prove it!” all they want, and ESPN can suck their own dick for rearranging their whole programming schedule all they want. Nothing has changed in the game of baseball, except people finally know for a fact that Roger Clemens is a lying assclown. Looking at the list of names on the report, I can honestly say that all the names fall into one of two categories. Either I’m completely unsurprised, or the dude was a mediocre player and no one really cares.

The purpose of a union is to protect the interests and personal safety of its members. The message that the MLBPA has sent is that it will continue to turn a blind eye to steroid use. It negotiated a drug testing policy, but there are glaring problems. For one, the players know well in advance when they will be tested. If Cheech and Chong knew they had a drug test coming in three weeks, they would pass. And that’s pot, which stays in the body far longer than any other illicit drug. Players can run 2-4 week steroid cycles all season long, and when their test is rolling around, they can simply skip a cycle and no one ever finds out they were using.

When certain members of the union are using steroids and other dangerous drugs to enhance their performance, those who don’t use are forced into a decision no one should be asked to make: Do I continue to play clean, and risk losing my income (which, by the way, is about all they have because a large number of major league players chose the minor leagues over college) because I can’t play at THIS Major League level, or do I go on the juice, risking brain cancer, sterility, violent mood swings, breast growth, et cetera, so I can continue to support my family? If the MLBPA were truly interested in protecting the well-being of its members, they would swiftly move towards a much more stringent drug-control policy. Almost every reputable company has a policy that allows it to perform random drug tests, especially in occupations that are unionized. Instead, the spokesman for the union spent his entire portion of the press conference double-speaking and spewing thinly veiled rhetoric, basically stating that they didn’t have to do shit, because Mitchell had nothing but hearsay evidence. When asked if the union should have some moral responsibility to its players’ health, his response was some gobbledy-gook about the players’ legal representation, and how the MLBPA had advised players to seek their own legal counsel; completely irrelevant to the question.

The worst part about the Mitchell Report isn’t the players named, or even Mitchell saying that MLB and management allowed the drug culture to flourish. It isn’t even the fact that the MLBPA has jammed its proverbial head in the sand and refused to acknowledge the problem. The worst part is that nothing is going to change.