Scott Carson

Stats man Scott Carson is now in his 17th season as "third man in the booth" during Blue Jays telecasts. Watch for his columns regularly on Sportsnet.ca.

For fans, October is a time to celebrate everything that is great about the game of baseball.

But unfortunately, in these cynical times that we live in, the dark side of the game continues to get a lot of ink.

Despite the instant memories provided by two teams on the field, it is the 18-month Mitchell probe into the use of performance enhancing drugs that quite often steals the headlines. Originally set up after Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and the like came off so poorly in front of the U.S. Congress, the investigation has turned into something of a joke.

Not a week can go by without another player getting 'outed' by a media that seems to take a perverse pleasure in going after the bad guys. Fair enough; the use of drugs, without a proper and legal prescription, is against the laws of the game. Plain and simple. The problem lies in the timing, especially the most recent disclosure before Game 7 of the ALCS that Indians' pitcher Paul Byrd had purchased approximately $25,000 worth of Human Growth Hormone (HGH) and syringes between 2002 and 2005.

Byrd didn't deny that this took place, saying that the drug was taken for a pituitary gland problem and under the care of a physician. Byrd also claimed that both the Indians and MLB officials knew of his condition, something that both the team and MLB are both disputing.

With nothing concrete coming out of the Mitchell probe/witch hunt, why couldn't the San Francisco Chronicle, who ran with the story on Sunday, wait until the World Series ends before 'outing' Byrd. It's not like it's a matter of national security and the safety of society was hanging in the balance.

So, this is why Jose Canseco and Jason Grimsley are no longer playing the game that made them filthy rich, and why Troy Glaus, Scott Schoeneweis, Rick Ankiel, Gary Mathews Jr. and Byrd now have to deal with the whispers of a skeptical public. And they must also wait to see when the other shoe will drop. If what they have done was illegal then MLB must step in and punish them. This will lead to yet another fight with the players' union, but MLB needs to take a hard line approach to deal with the cheaters.

For those of us that follow the Blue Jays, the Glaus situation could become a problem if MLB drops, say, a 50-game suspension on the Blue Jays everyday, when healthy, third baseman. The team was forced to go with a platoon of Russ Adams and Hector Luna to close out their disappointing 2007 season when Glaus starting breaking down, and being forced to go with that pairing over the first seven weeks of 2008 isn't going to get the Jays any closer to the post-season that they so covet.

One thing is for sure: until the Mitchell report is released and names are named, the focus on baseball will continue to drift away from the field, where the World Series is currently taking place, and onto a computer screen near you. And in a season where some great performances took place, one has to skeptically wonder if any of them were chemically enhanced.

Sad, really.

THIS & THAT

If the Yankees hope to stay near the top, the only choice to succeed Joe Torre is Joe Girardi. Nothing against Don Mattingly, but his first Major League managing job shouldn't be in charge of that daily circus ... Watching the first two games of this World Series has reinforced my belief that the American League style of ball is vastly superior. A.L. teams can flat out rake and can overcome whatever pitching shortcomings they may have with old fashioned good wood ... Staying with the Fall Classic, can someone explain to me why they can't start games at 7:10, so that they'll end at a decent hour? Who in their right mind, unless you live in Denver or Boston, is going to stay up until past midnight in the middle of the week, knowing that the morning alarm comes pretty early, to see the entire game? And this is giving advertisers full value how? And how about an afternoon game on the weekend like when we were kids and not consumers? ... Just because the Rockies dropped the first two games of the World Series on the road, doesn't mean you can stick a fork in them. Seven other teams have overcome that same deficit:

1955 Brooklyn Dodgers

1956 New York Yankees

1958 New York Yankees

1965 Los Angeles Dodgers

1971 Pittsburgh Pirates

1978 New York Yankees

1981 Los Angels Dodgers