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.

With the Mitchell Report naming superstars like Clemens, Tejada and Pettitte, people tend to take notice.

Now I'm not going to sit here and tell you that all baseball players are bad citizens after 90 of them were named in the Mitchell Report on steroid use. I mean, really, close to 1500 players have graced Major League fields over the time-frame now known as "The Steroid Era". So, in broad terms, less than one percent of those players used chemicals to get a competitive advantage. In the grand scheme of things, that's really not that shocking.

But when names of superstar players like Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada and Andy Pettitte get "outed" then people tend to sit and take notice, even if this behaviour had been whispered in the past. Somewhere Barry Bonds is smiling, even though his name came up 103 times in the voluminous 409-page indictment of the great game. Now, he has company on the Mount Rushmore of baseball infamy.

For Clemens, hit hardest in the report (eight pages were dedicated to him alone), it puts a big smear on what should be a first-ballot, Hall of Fame career. According to Brian McNamee, his personal trainer who became the Blue Jays' strength and conditioning coach over the two seasons that 'The Rocket' spent in Toronto, he injected Clemens with steroids in 1998, and human growth hormone in 2000 and 2001.

Over those seasons, he went 53-17 and won two of his seven Cy Young Awards. But you have to consider the source of this information. McNamee is one of those bulked up muscleheads that you come across in pro sports and perhaps he had an axe to grind with Clemens, who broke away from him prior to his latest comeback with the Yankees this season.

McNamee also gave up the information under the threat of prosecution. And he also, allegedly, sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel pool late in the 2001 season while working for the Yankees. Police investigating later said that the woman had ingested the date rape drug GHB and, while no charges were laid, McNamee's credibility clearly has to come into question in regards to his accusations towards Clemens.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and defend Clemens. He's a big boy with more money than you and I could ever dream of having, but eyebrows do get raised around the timeframe of his alleged steroid use. Here was a pitcher that the Red Sox believed was washed up, and if there's anything that Clemens is known for is his insatiable pride. So off he went to the Blue Jay to prove everyone wrong, which he did, re-launching his career that led to a pair of World Series titles with the Yankees after two seasons in Toronto. Plus, one has to wonder how a player in what should be the twilight of career suddenly gets better. The same can be said for Bonds, and I guess we'll all find out the truth on him now that he's been indicted for allegedly lying to a Grand Jury.

For Toronto baseball fans, it was a particularly eye-opening day with 10 of the 90 names having worn the various shades of Blue Jay blue over the years. For the record, Clemens (1997-98), Jose Canseco (1998), Howie Clark (2003-04, 2007), Bobby Estalella (2004), Troy Glaus (2006-present), Glenallen Hill (1989-91), Benito Santiago (1997-98), Scott Schoeneweis (2005-06), David Segui (1999) and Gregg Zaun (2004-present) found their names in the body of this report. Glaus was no real surprise after it was revealed back in September that he had, allegedly, received multiple shipments of steroids between September 2003 and May 2004 while recovering from shoulder injuries. Anyone who saw Canseco walking around the pool at the team's hotel in Tampa in 1998 knew he had to be on something. The same is true with Segui and Santiago who just appeared abnormally muscular and had moody personalities to boot.

The inclusion of Zaun's name came as a surprise to many, although I remember thinking to myself how bulked up he had become when we first saw him at Spring Training in 2005. But, hey, I'm not here to point fingers, I'm just saying what I observed as a guy who's been around the team on an everyday basis since 1993.

From what I've been able to dig up, the Mitchell got little support from the players or their union, who basically circled the wagons to protect what is theirs, even though it was against the rules. Apparently, the only Blue Jay to talk to the investigators was Frank Thomas, who was not named anywhere in the report. And this is the great shame of this. No one likes to rat any of their peers out, so it was left to the likes of McNamee and former Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski, another person of questionable character, to break the code and end the silence about the drug culture that had taken over the game.

It would be nice if all that was written is proved and those that cheated got what's coming to them. Commissioner Bud Selig said that he will deal with individuals case by case, even though one of the recommendations was that those players named shouldn't be punished. I guess they're still not here to talk about the past, which was Mark McGwire's defence back in 2005 when he was called before U.S. Congress. But the one person who should be punished is the dithering Commissioner himself. Under his watch, the game turned into a laughable joke where making big money and putting up crooked stats took precedence over playing the game on an even playing field.

But will it all matter in the end, except for the holier-than-thou Hall of Fame voters keeping the chemically-altered out of Cooperstown? Probably not. The fans will return en masse next spring to cheer for their heroes, although those of us that truly love the game will now never pick up a record book that wasn't printed before 1990.