Former Sen. George Mitchell unleashed his report in New York on
Thursday on the Major League Baseball (MLB)'s drug culture, saying
all MLB team had players involved in drugs.
Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader, blamed both players
and management for the problem.
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Mitchell is a director of the MLB Boston Red Sox and served on one
of Bud Selig's economic study committees. Selig, commissioner of
MLB, hired him in March 2006 to investigate drug use in the
sport.
"For more than a decade there has widespread anabolic steroid
use" in baseball, he addressed the media and released his
report.
Mitchell said the problem didn't develop overnight and there was
plenty of blame to go around.
"Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades -
commissioners, club officials, the players' association and players
- shares to some extent the responsibility for the steroids era,"
Mitchell said. "There was a collective failure to recognize the
problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on."
Seven MVPs showed up and in all, 80-some players were fingered.
Among them, home-run-king Barry Bonds, already under indictment on
charges of lying to a federal grand jury about steroids, and Gary
Sheffield also were named in baseball's most infamous lineup.
"If there are problems, I wanted them revealed," said Selig.
"His (Mitchell's) report is a call to action, and I will act."
Selig said discipline will be determined in case by case basis,
and action will be taken "swiftly."
(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2007)