And Now On A Serious Note Fart

NOTE: POST UPDATED BELOW.

So, a few preliminaries: I haven't been a fan of baseball all of my life, although I've been a serious fan since I lived in Boston and got sucked into the losing ways of the Boston Red Sox (which turned out to only last through the first year of my rooting for them. Who knew?). And I've been pretty bored of the Barry Bonds/Steroids story-- yes, steroids are bad, but it's a complicated issue when you get down to it, because it's not very clear where acceptable "enhancement"-- and even acceptable cheating-- should end and where unacceptable cheating should begin. I mean, steroids clearly falls on one side of that line, but it's hard to make a moral issue out of it when you're looking at the picture of how people succeed in baseball.

With that said, I was a lot more affected than I expected to be when I saw the list of players that-- rumor has it (AND BY THIS I MEAN I AM NOT SAYING THAT ANYONE ON ANY LIST HAS USED STEROIDS, I'M JUST TALKING ABOUT RUMORS I'VE HEARD)-- will be named in the Mitchell Report. It included a lot of players that I loved to watch play and rooted (and still root) strongly for. I felt cheated and shocked. Which I guess is the point of the whole exercise. This is going to be a lot harder for baseball and the sports world to deal with than I had initially thought.

Where is the list? You can find it on various sports gossip sites, and the real list is coming out soon enough. I'm not posting it here, because every player on the list is calling their lawyer right now, and I have enough work to do as it is.

UPDATE: Well, the official list is out, and it appears, at least in my quick glance, to be quite different in some respects than the rumor list. I also note that it does not even appear that all of the listed players are necessarily accused of having used steroids. So take it for what it is, which might not be very much at all. Still, a lousy day to be Roger Clemens.