It was almost 30 years ago that some very bright, young men gathered at the late, lamented La Rotisserie restaurant in New York City to hammer out the framework for baseball's first fantasy league (or "Rotisserie baseball," as it is still known by the game's first generation of players).

No doubt these folks had some modest ambitions for their little game and themselves. But given that they were journalists and, thus, both perpetual cynics and limited in their intellectual scope, they would never have regarded themselves as visionaries and certainly weren't craving mainstream respectability. But it came anyway, with roto-ball exploding over the next couple of decades into not just a game and guilty pleasure but an industry that would embrace many sports, serve millions of participants with vital (as well as worthless) information and produce billions in annual revenues.

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I saw nothing but positives for Yankee fans when the Steinbrenner II regime surprisingly bypassed Yankee legend Don Mattingly as successor to Joe Torre and opted instead for Joe Girardi. Girardi, no Gentleman Joe like his predecessor, would, I believed, shake up the New York clubhouse, roiling the staid, business-like squad and making it a bit more aggressive and contentious.

But Girardi has only looked foolish in his first public dust-up of spring training. First he called out some poor Tampa Rays kid for barreling into a Yankee minor-league catcher on a play at the plate. The catcher, a AA prospect, broke his wrist as a result of the collision. Girardi, himself a former catcher, insisted that kind of play had no place in spring training, ignoring the fact that spring training was the only place the youngster had to impress Tampa's brass and that Girardi would likely have praised that kind of aggressive, but clean baserunning from one of his. Moreover, while all men may be equal in the cosmic scheme of things, it isn't so on the baseball diamond. And it wasn't like the Tampa Bay player bowled over Yankee star Jorge Posada and knocked him out for part of the season.

But Girardi's comments led to a predictable result in this week's rematch between New York and Tampa. In the first inning Wednesday, Yankee pitcher Heath Phillips hit the Rays' prize rookie, Evan Longoria, and was ejected. Then far more egregiously, New York's Shelley Duncan, who had mouthed off a bit after the earlier game, slid spikes up into the groin of Ray second basemen Akinori Iwamura. Duncan was ejected, but not before both team's benches emptied onto the field--and later Yankee veterans pointedly offered no defense of his baserunning assault. Girardi, however, was unapologetic following the game, saying that nothing upset him that day except "that my catcher's having surgery today."

In 2006, Girardi was fired from his last managerial job with the Florida Marlins after a season which would earn him Manager of the Year honors. His downfall came when he popped off at the team's owner for his caustic comments aimed at umpires from the stands. While I still think Girardi will invigorate this unusually youthful Yankee team, one has to at least wonder if there's some loose wiring in his brain-mouth connection that might eventually lead to a swift downfall in what is one of baseball's toughest towns.

Congressional approval ratings are appallingly low--ranging from 18 to 33 percent in a variety of news media polls this year--and trail even the paltry support President Bush retains. And those who got a glimpse of Congress in action Wednesday in the Roger Clemens hearing might be surprised to discover they are that high.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform can cite a legitimate public health interest to justify its scrutiny of the issue of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. Moreover, the Mitchell Report stemmed from the committee's original 2005 hearings on baseball and its subsequent scolding of Major League Baseball leadership to get its house in order.

But the hearing, much like anything Congress touches, quickly degenerated into a succession of partisan skirmishes where truth was the least important matter on the agenda. The Republicans seemed intent on bolstering Clemens as a self-proclaimed patriot (though pitching for the American team in the 2006 World Baseball Classic hardly constitutes heroic service to America) and  "a titan" of the game (a description that would also fit Pete Rose, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds). Some of their support for Clemens seemed downright delusional, like when Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina displayed four pictures from different stages of the pitcher's career and insisted, with the scientific precision of the human eye, that he looked the same size in all of them. Anybody who has followed Clemens's career knows he has undergone dramatic physical changes--you could actually see some of it in those photos--and the only real question is how--not whether--he bulked up.

I don't know if the GOP was carrying water for the President, who apparently regards Clemens, a fellow Texan, as something of a baseball buddy from Bush's days running the Texas Rangers. Or whether it was just payback for autographed baseballs and photos that he might have bestowed on committee members during three days of pre-hearing  lobbying. More likely they just saw him as a classic red-stater that their constituency might applaud, at least when pitted against a blue-stater like Brian McNamee, a New York City ethnic and exactly the kind of threat to the fabric of this nation that might never make it to our shores if the congressional GOP had their way with immigration law.

McNamee is certainly a sad sack of a fellow, a wannabe and a fetch-it. But as contemptible as he may be, casting him as a "drug dealer" and the prime villain in this matter when he was servicing his multi-millionaire clients at their behest, is fatuous. Then again some of these folks would prefer to blame the secretaries at Enron for typing up fraudulent documents than the executives who orchestrated the conspiracy. There were certainly no harsh indictments from committee members for Andy Petttitte's dad, who was revealed in Pettitte's deposition as his son's source for HGH on the second occasion the pitcher tried it.

The committee has now posted documents--depositions and affidavits--on its Website and they certainly shed light on the matter. Reading Pettitte's statement as well as that of Chuck Knoblauch, the other players fingered by McNamee, is painful going, as their testimony is cloaked in what appears to be genuine shame. But emotion aside, they tell fairly simple stories that confirm that McNamee was telling the truth about them. Pettitte, of course, goes further, saying that Clemens told him he was using HGH. Not the kind of shocker you "misremembered", as Clemens insists Pettitte did.

Clemens has no shame, just bluster and sanctimony. But then again, neither did the committee that hosted him. Its performance sullied everyone involved, not least of all themselves. Committee chair Henry Waxman has now told the New York Times that he regrets holding the hearings and only did it because of Clemens' insistence on a public hearing. Frankly, It appears to be one in a succession of public miscalculations by the Clemens team. I can't imagine whom Clemens actually convinced with his tale or his twitchy tongue. I genuinely doubt it was even the committee members who appeared to be on his side.

There have been, of late, no dearth of stunning scenes involving athletes and performance-enhancing drugs--from Barry Bonds being indicted to Marion Jones being sentenced to jail. But none were any more remarkable than the sight of Roger Clemens, a man who throughout his career has shown a limited capacity for humility, strolling around the corridors of Congress, beseeching its members, like any high-rent lobbyist, to believe his version of the truth: that he never took performance-enhancing drugs.

We can no longer be shocked by the notion that somebody might lie under oath to the Congressional committee investigating the use of steroids and other drugs in baseball. It almost certainly happened two years ago, the first go-around of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on this issue. But while we suspected one or more of the players testifying that day was lying, we couldn't be sure. (Ironically, the most damning testimony on that occasion was Mark McGwire's and he clearly told the truth: that he didn't want to talk about it.) But next Wednesday, when the Mitchell Report on drug use in baseball and Roger Clemens, the biggest star named in that report, take center stage before the committee, there will be--unless somebody changes his story--to say the least, contradictions. This is no longer a case of he said/he said. The wildly differing stories being offered by Clemens and his accuser, Brian McNamee, a former trainer who worked closely with Clemens, can't both be true.

It's like a Congressional version of the old TV game show "To Tell the Truth"--with prison the possible outcome for the one deemed the loser. McNamee has upped the ante by claiming he kept needles and other materials that he used to inject Clemens with illegal drugs in 2000 and 2001 when The Rocket pitched for the New York Yankees and McNamee worked for the ballclub. Clemens' defense against these materials, at least as suggested by his lawyers, is that they are phony evidence manufactured by McNamee, an indication of how desperate he is to pursue this vindictive scheme against Clemens. It is certainly evidence that McNamee is a snake, but that has never really been at issue. But if he manufactured this evidence, he is more than desperate, he is a total madman.

Roger Clemens has always had a reputation among sportswriters for playing fast and loose with the truth. Will McDonough, the late and legendary Boston Globe sports columnist, called him the "Texas con man" long before Clemens' integrity was called into question on something as major as his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. Still, what Clemens said was never exactly what you got, or at the very least was open to question.

When he was in Boston, he took a lot of flak, for example, after being heard complaining about having to carry his own bags, but he later denied ever saying that. Then there was the more important question of why he left the 6th game of the 1986 World Series after seven innings--with the Red Sox ahead of the New York Mets 3-2 (as well as 3 to 2 in games) and on the cusp of their first championship in 68 years. The bullpen collapsed, setting the stage for Bill Buckner's infamous gaffe and a Mets World Series triumph. Red Sox manager John McNamara would later insist that Clemens had asked out with a blister, though Clemens denied it.

When he departed the Red Sox as a free agent, he said his major motivation was being closer to his family in Texas, then signed the biggest money offer--which happened to come from one of the few teams, Toronto, that was further away from Texas than Boston. Two seasons later, he forced his way out of Toronto and on to the Yankees. When he retired from the Yankees, he took the car and the gifts in a moving ceremony--and of course soon unretired to play with Houston, the first of his three non-retirements.

And now we're asked to believe his version of very important events, as offered to Mike Wallace on "60 Minutes" last night. Clemens had the home-field advantage not to mention an interviewer with whom he had a friendly relationship and who, at 89, can no longer bring it or mix up his pitches very effectively. Still, Clemens was not at all convincing. In fact, he came across more as someone aggrieved that his standout career didn't entitle him to the benefit of the doubt from everybody than as a man who could effectively rebut the allegations made by his former trainer, Brian McNamee.

Even though Wallace didn't follow up with the toughest questions, those question were in the air and Clemens didn't really take a swing at them. He didn't explain why, in his initial videotaped statement denying the allegations in the Mitchell Report, he didn't mention those legal injections given him by McNamee that were now at the core of his defense. He didn't explain the medical efficacy of the purported injections of the painkiller lidocaine and the vitamin B-12, which medical experts have questioned. He didn't explain why McNamee would lie about him, except to suggest it was "to stay out of prison", though it appears to be quite the opposite--that McNamee is in jeopardy of going to jail only if he didn't tell the truth. Finally, he had no coherent response to why his close friend and training partner, Andy Pettitte would acknowledge the truth of McNamee's allegation that Pettitte used HGH except to say they are two separate cases though they are anything but that.

I certainly understand Clemens' distress. Overnight, courtesy of the Mitchell Report, he went from being a revered American icon to the mound counterpart to slugger Barry Bonds. Yet with all that is at stake, he never even took the offensive and denounced McNamee a liar. We are left to wonder if that is because McNamee's lawyer threatened a defamation of character lawsuit (UPDATE: Clemens beat him to the punch, filing a defamation suit against McNamee today) and that Clemens could never make that charge stick under oath. And, of course, with Pettite and others under oath too.

Clemens seems to think the public owes him because he was the greatest pitcher of the modern era when how he became the greatest pitcher of the modern era is exactly what is in question now. And his whiff on "60 Minutes" portends an even bumpier time of it for Rocket Roger next week when he is expected to appear--under oath--before a Congressional committee.

Roger Clemens and Mike Wallace once boasted the best fastballs in their respective games. On Sunday we'll see how they match up.

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When it came time to announce the results of the two-year investigation of steroids in Major League Baseball, it was no surprise that the three parties involved—former Senator George Mitchell, league commissioner Bud Selig, and players association head Don Fehr—insisted on holding separate press conferences in separate venues. Considering it practically took an act of Congress for there even to be an investigation, why would the three sides cooperate with each other now? And so it was, three different press conferences, at three different hotels. Let the three-ring circus that is Major League Baseball begin.

First stop, the New York Grand Hyatt Hotel. I knew I was in the right place when I spotted Jose Canseco lurking around the lobby. Jose, after his 2005 tell-all “Juiced” was published, has been all too willing to talk about how he and others—lots of others—injected themselves and each other with steroids. Today, Jose wasn’t commenting. But he was available to have his picture taken. Say cheese!

Inside the spacious Grand Hyatt ballroom, and it would seem more spacious as the day went on, a few hundred reporters sat eagerly waiting to get their hands on the report 21 months in the making. And then it came, all 311 pages of it. As aides passed out copies, the room hushed as we all rifled through its pages, searching the legalese for the only thing we really wanted—names. And as we found them, the whispers rose above the crowd. “Clemens! Pettitte! Tejada! Miadich!… wait, who? Bart Miadich, a middling minor leaguer who spent portions of two seasons pitching for the Anaheim Angels before fizzling out in Japan in 2006, and who suffered some serious “roid rage” according to the report, was one of a number of players fingered as dopers by former Mets batboy turned pusher-man Kirk Radomski. In fact, if Radomski hadn’t agreed to cooperate with Mitchell, which he did as part of a plea agreement he struck when federal prosecutors busted him on steroid distribution charges earlier this year, it’s not sure how much thunder Mitchell would have brought to the table today.

After a lengthy summary of the report, in which he compared investigating Major League Baseball with brokering a peace deal in Northern Ireland, Mitchell dropped a bombshell: Do not discipline players, he said. It will only cost more money and bring more pain to baseball. “All efforts need to look to the future,” said Mitchell.  Oookay, but speaking of the future, the children, doesn’t refusing to punish these players send the wrong message to the kids who cheer for them? “We’re all human,” Mitchell answered, before waxing political about responsibility, accountability and deterrence. Then through a barrage of questions, Mitchell refused to drift even the slightest beyond his mandate of investigating steroids. Should this affect Hall of Fame balloting? How much did it cost? Is this a particular indictment of Barry Bonds? No comment. But, asked whether the players union was cooperative, Mitchell did finally concede, it has not been. Blast, too bad they’re not here to comment.

We’d have to wait until 6 PM to get their take on the whole they stonewalled us thing. In the meantime, it was off to the Waldorf Astoria for the swanky MLB presser. Six blocks up Park Ave in a gale of freezing rain, we all gathered in the 18^th floor Palm Room of the Waldorf, where, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, looking as frumpy and squinty as ever in the bright lights and flashes of the cameras, pronounced boldly, almost defiantly, “This is a call to action and I will act!” Selig announced that he embraced all 20 of Mitchell’s recommendations, and practically patted himself on the back in describing how proactive baseball has been in ridding itself of steroids. Use “appears” to have declined, Selig trumpeted. Teams are no longer given 24-hour notice prior to one of its players being given a random drug test. Human Growth hormones have been banned, though there’s still no way to test for it. The league has even partnered with the Partnership for a Drug Free America. “But!” Selig insisted, finger raised in the air, “fans deserve a level playing field, and Major League Baseball remains committed.”

So, will he investigate players? Punishment will be determined and doled out on a case-by-case basis, said Selig. Does that include striking stats from the record books? Or perhaps noting them with an asterisk? “Case by case,” Selig reminded us. “I have a lot of work to do,” he said. And how much does he consider himself at fault for this whole mess? “It happened. As I said before, this document should serve as a road map and if it serves that purpose…” Yeah, apparently not at all. Oh and also, despite the MLB having had the document for three days, Selig hadn’t finished reading it yet, which, conveniently, gave him the ability not to comment on many of its specifics or its scope or even what he intended to do about it, other than to reiterate that somehow, someway, at some point, he would act.

Right, moving on. For act three we jaunted just down the block to the Intercontinental Hotel, and its 3rd floor Madison Room, which, though ornate and wood-paneled, was about a tenth of the size of the Grand Hyatt ballroom. Aha, and now we saw their plan: march us around in the freezing rain and cram us into progressively smaller rooms, they’re trying to wear us out. And it was working. By 6 PM Donald Fehr, executive director of the MLB players association, entered and gave a terse, unapologetic, at times combative press conference. Though first asserting how cooperative the players association has been, he did concede that “perhaps” steps could have been taken sooner. However, with Selig acting unilaterally as he did in announcing the investigation two years ago, the players association was essentially left with no choice but to represent the players as it felt it should, which essentially meant they told them to stonewall the investigation. Not that Fehr said it so bluntly. He urged players to find other lawyers to advise them, given the ongoing criminal investigations. Throughout, Fehr refused to speculate on any number of fronts, because he too hadn’t read the report either. Though Fehr perhaps had a better excuse. Mitchell’s investigative team he ran out of his law firm DLA Piper, hadn’t sent the players association a copy of the report until 1pm that afternoon, and it was just one hard copy at that. “We had to make all the copies ourselves,” said MLBPA communications director Greg Bouris.  So it seemed, that Mitchell, tired after two years of being denied access to players and lacking the power to subpoena them, was determined to stick it to the players association by sending them one hard copy of his 300 page report. And so with each of the three parties touting their own compliance and lack of fault, the day ended and we walked, tired and cold, once again into the freezing rain.

Major League Baseball has had no claim to the sacred for a very long time—certainly not after many of its big-name players began falling out of the pharmaceutical closet. And this year it truly descended to the profane when Barry Bonds, just months ahead of his federal indictment for lying to a grand jury about his use of performance-enhancing drugs, broke the game's most hallowed record as its all-time home run king.

So perhaps nobody should have been surprised—certainly not after some of the rare confessors, like Jose Canseco and the late Ken Caminiti, described steroid use in baseball as epidemic—by anything former senator George Mitchell revealed today as a result of his investigation into drug use in the game. Still, there had to be gasps throughout the nation as the greatest pitcher of the modern era, Roger Clemens, was fingered as a drug cheat right alongside Bonds. For his part, Clemens is denying everything. Late in the day Clemens's lawyer, Rusty Hardin, issued a statement calling the inclusion of his client's name "very unfair." Hardin said, "He is left with no meaningful way to combat what he strongly contends are totally false allegations. He has not been charged with anything, he will not be charged with anything, and yet he is being tried in the court of public opinion with no recourse."

Nobody, certainly not Mitchell, was pretending that the list of some six dozen names was comprehensive. Most of those named appear to be players unlucky enough to have procured steroids from one of two men: Kirk Radomski, a former New York Mets clubhouse assistant who cooperated as part of a federal plea agreement, and Brian McNamee, Clemens's former personal trainer who became a New York Yankees strength and conditioning coach. And the report owes a clear debt to "Game of Shadows," the book about Bonds's ties to the BALCO drug lab. Still, after a 21-month chase, with virtually no players cooperating with him and no special investigatory powers, Mitchell did name names that reflected a broad cross-section of the game, from a potential Hall of Famer to marginal big-leaguers, from bulked-up sluggers to scrawny infielders, and pitchers of all stripes—not just pin-.

The list included current big-name players—Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada, Eric Gagne, Paul Lo Duca, Gary Sheffield, and Brian Roberts—as well as former stars—Kevin Brown, Chuck Knoblauch, Lenny Dykstra, David Justice, Mo Vaughn, Matt Williams and Benito Santiago. (See a gallery of some of the biggest names among current players in the report). Except for Clemens, none of the players named in the report had immediate comment. Mitchell insisted that he didn't simply rely on the testimony of cooperating witnesses, but that he had corroborating evidence. Still, some of it, at least as produced in the report, seems rather sketchy, vague and possibly inconclusive.
 

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In the 15 years I have been covering sports for Newsweek and the seven years I have been writing my "Starr Gazing" column, I have probably written the name "Barry Bonds" more than that of any other athlete. As a genuine fan of the game of baseball, that has not given me much pleasure. Several years ago, when I suggested that Bonds was most likely a cheater and a liar, I took more heat and abuse from readers than I ever have on any subject.

Who was I, they asked, to pass judgment on Bonds without more proof? At the time I wrote back, explaining that folks had apparently confused me with a court of law, I had the proof of my eyes and my brain and was not required to consider concepts like "beyond a reasonable doubt." Still, I was reasonably familiar with performance-enhancing drugs, courtesy of a lot of experience covering Olympics, and everything I knew-—indeed all reason-—convinced me that Bonds was intimately familiar with those things too. Now there will no longer be any confusion about the difference between a columnist and a court of law and Bonds clearly has far more to fear from the judgment of the latter than he did from anything I or any other sportswriter ever wrote.

It is rather strange how his indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice—almost four years after he testified before a federal grand jury investigating the distribution of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs at a lab called BALCO—mirrors Bonds' pursuit of Henry Aaron to become baseball's all-time home run king. As with that record set by Bonds this past summer, the indictment was a long time coming, but it always had a certain inevitability about it. One can't help but suspect that, with reporters saying only an indictment could stop Bonds from catching Aaron, federal prosecutors may have waited so that their motives were not clouded by baseball concerns.

Bonds' lawyer, Mike Rains, saw it coming several years ago, telling Newsweek and others that the government was setting a "perjury trap" for his client. It was not a concept I totally grasped. How can anybody fall a perjury trap, I wondered aloud, if they didn't perjure themselves? Now Mike Rains, has upped the rhetorical and metaphorical ante, wondering how a Justice Department that can't recognize waterboarding as torture can be trusted to distinguish prosecution from persecution. Before this case is over, federal prosecutors will have to demonstrate that they can hit a curve ball out of the park almost as well as Bonds did.

Perjury cases are notoriously difficult to prosecute, especially when words like "knowingly" are sprinkled through the grand jury testimony. In grand jury testimony leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, Bonds even admitted using two substances identified as undetecatable BALCO steroids called "the clear" and "the cream", but insisted he believed that they were flaxseed oil and a rubbing balm. However, according to the federal indictment, prosecutors claim to be in possession of drug tests indicating that Bonds took steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. These tests are presumably the fruits of subpoenas that claimed samples from baseball's earliest drug testing, when the results did not count against the players—at least not on the baseball diamond. And prosecutors, armed with records from BALCO where Bonds was an enthusiastic client, have already won six cases stemming from that investigation. Just last month Olympic star Marion Jones, who for years had denied drug use as vehemently as Bonds has, pled guilty to two counts of lying to federal investigators—and later surrendered the five Olympic medals she won in Sydney.

At the very least, Bonds who has managed for years to maintain a high degree of bluster in the face of these accusations, now has something very serious—he faces up to 30 years in prison—to worry about. Far more serious than whether he will participate in Hall of Fame ceremonies if the Hall displays his record-setting ball branded with an asterisk. Now he must wonder whether he will ever make it to Cooperstown and, even if he does, what a Barry Bonds Hall of Fame plaque might say. Here's guessing that if Bonds makes it there, regardless of what his plaque says, fans will see the name Barry Bonds and read, as baseball blogger Bill Chuck has long it, B*arry B*onds.

Ever since his glorious romp--his 756th--around the bases to surpass Hank Aaron as baseball's all-time home-run king, Barry Bonds has had a rather inglorious time of it. He limped to the season's finish--September was a total bust as Bonds hit .233 with just one homer and two RBIs--and finished his extraordinary 15 seasons with the Giants sidelined by injury. Now a free agent trying to extend his career by at least another year, Bonds has already popped off several times, none of them very jolly communications.

While he had originally termed the team's decision not to resign him disappointing, but "a business decision", he apparently reconsidered before publicly griping about the ingratitude of the Giants. After all his records and historic accomplishments, he said, "And then I got fired. Shame on me, huh." Then he took a shot at the Hall of Fame, saying he would not partake of any process in Cooperstown if the Hall displays his ball with an asterisk. (Fashion designer Mark Ecko bought the ball and, after a fan vote, branded it with an asterisk before donating it to the Hall.) Finally this month, he sounded a familiar complaint, that he has been singled out as a scapegoat for baseball's history of drug problems.

I have addressed that issue frequently, pointing out that Bonds not only has been a singular ballplayer on the field, but that he is also one of the few whose close association with BALCO, an illegal dispensary of performance-enhancing drugs, has been revealed in detail. Still, he overstates the case. A couple former superstars now out of the game, Rafael Palmeiro and Mark McGwire, once seemed mortal locks for the Hall of Fame. But Palmeiro's positive test for steroids and McGwire's stumbling testimony before Congress in which he would not deny using drugs have made both baseball pariahs. And Jason Giambi, whose grand jury testimony in the BALCO investigation along with Bonds', endured a public tarring over revelations of his extensive use of steroids and HGH.

Still, while Bonds may never shed the tarnish that drugs has cast over his record, he may feel a lot less lonely now--and even more so in days to come. This year has seen a steady trickle of names--Gary Matthews, Troy Glaus, Paul Byrd, Jose Guillen, former slugger Matt Williams and others--linked with acquisition of large quantities of steroids or human growth hormone. And now there are reports--confirmed by a MLB players union official--that 11 free agents, or about seven per cent of the baseball's current class, were asked to speak to former Sen. George Mitchell, who is heading up baseball's own investigation into past use of performance-enhancing drugs.

That report is expected to be released next month and there is a lot of ambiguity as to whether it will actually name names--lots and lots of names. It is possible that Mitchell could simply report that drug use was so epidemic--every bit as widespread as that performance-enhancing drugs proselytizer Jose Canseco insisted it was--that it would be almost easier to name the players that didn't use drugs. Those who were hoping to once and for all sort out the good guys and the bad guys figure to be disappointed. This was never a morality play about good and evil. Bad guys cheated, good guys cheated too; the result is a shameful morass in which the baseball establishment did nothing, cheapening and squandering its most vauable resource, the game's rich history. Any asterisk on Bonds is just a tiny part of the giant asterisk, now established in fans' hearts and minds, that marks and mars an entire baseball era.

Curt Schilling, who had already bid goodbye to Boston, is going nowhere. The 40-year-old pitcher became the first of the big-name free agents to settle his future, signing a one-year contract with the Red Sox. No athlete greets all subjects--sports, civic, politics--with more bluster than Schilling. And while I don't love his politics (conservative GOP) or the fact that he actually apologized to Barry Bonds for one of his acid, shoot-from-the-hip remarks, Schilling brings an unusual intelligence to his career on and off the field.

As a result, Schilling not only serves as his own agent, but also reports the deal himself--with extraordinary candor--on his official blog "38 Pitches". Schilling accepted $8 million in salary, with incentives and bonuses that could boost the total to $14 million. (He gets $1 million for receiving a single Cy Young vote as the league's best pitcher, a wonderful opportunity for a big payday for some sportswriter. Just joking, Curt.) The major sticking point was Schilling's weight and conditioning and the pitcher reveals he agreed to a "weigh-in clause" during the second round of offers and counter-offers, accepting $2 million in bonuses spread over six separate weight checks. Then this: "Given the mistakes I made last winter and into Spring Training, I needed to show them I recognized that and understood the importance of it…I also was completely broadsided by the fact that your body doesn't act/react the same way as you get older."

Even though the defending World Series champions already have five prospective starters, the deal would seem to be a no-brainer for the team. Starting pitching is the most prized commodity in the game and when former Twin Carlos Silva, with a career 55-46 mark, is being ballyhooed as the prized free agent starter in the market, Schilling seems an even greater bargain.Boston is now better positioned to give up a young pitcher if it decides to go after one of the bigger names--Minnesota's Johan Santana, Oakland's Dan Haren, Florida's Dontrelle Willis--being bandied about in trade rumors.

There is no doubt Schilling could have secured a bigger contract elsewhere, particularly in the National League where the diminishing speed of his fastball would not have been as big a factor. He has only won double-figure games in one of three seasons since his "bloody sock" tour de force led the Red Sox to the 2004 championship. But for Schilling, it is a chance to conclude his career in a town where he is a hero, where his family appears happy and where his and his wife's business/charity interests are established. It is always a pleasant surprise when an athlete appears to consider factors beyond the bottom line.

I, like most of my peers, used to view Schilling as a couple stats short of Hall-of-Fame stature, a top hurler who, because he was a late-bloomer, was not destined to reach Cooperstown. No longer. His 216-146 record along with 14th and climbing on the all-time strikeouts list compares very favorably with former Dodger Hall-of-Famer Don Drysdale's 209-166 record and 30th on the 'K' list. What should seal the Hall deal for Schilling is his post-season prowess, a record--with three different teams--of11-2 with a 2.23 ERA, including 3-0 for the Red Sox this past championship season.

You'll be hard-pressed to find anyone saying an unkind word about everybody's favorite, nice-guy manager Joe Torre. But not many folks found anything nice to say about the way Torre handled the Yankees bullpen throughout much of his New York tenure. The rap, a well-deserved one, was that he egregiously overused whichever reliever was his flavor of the moment, ruining the arms of guys like Ramiro Mendoza, Paul Quantrill and Flash Gordon. Oh yes, and of course Scott Proctor, whom Torre called upon 83 times for more than 102 innings in 2006 and another 52 times this past season before, with Proctor's arm presumably hanging by a thread, he was dealt to the Dodgers. Now Torre has dealt himself to the Dodgers and I suspect Proctor's right arm instantly began to throb.

Watching Torre in Los Angeles will be far more interesting than seeing him endure another tortured season in the Bronx. Instead of sitting back and waiting for the Hall to call, Torre, at 67 years old, puts his reputation and even that Cooperstown invite at risk. After all, he did manage three National League teams--the Mets, Braves and Cardinals--over 14 years with a notable lack of success, an overall winning percentage of .471 and just five winning seasons. His great strength with the Yankees was, of course, his even temperament and his steady hand--and his steadfast refusal to let bluster from the owner unsettle his talented team, which could then proceed about its merry, winning way.

For years now, I have been waging a lonely campaign against that ubiquitous Boston chant--you could hear it at Fenway Park, at any concert, even in church--of "Yankees Suck!" I found it crude, adolescent and, worst of all, painfully inaccurate. The New York Yankees didn't suck cause if they did, we here in Boston wouldn't have had to invest so much energy in pointing it out. It was far more a reflection of our jealousies and insecurities, a byproduct of the perpetual chase that we never won.

Apparently 2004, with its miraculous comeback, wasn't sufficient to retire the chant from our repertoire. That championship had too much of a kismet, once-in-a-lifetime feeling to cleanse our damaged baseball psyches. But 2007 should now do the trick. We will never rival the Yankees history, but right now their fans envy us. The Red Sox are the champions, this time without a a trace of fluke, and seem better positioned than the Yankees for the next championship run as well.

So there is absolutely no need to preoccupy ourselves with the Yankees. And I would suggest we can now retire "suck" from our baseball vocabularly--except, of course, for one thing. The National League really does suck. And it is important to hammer that home--the American League dominates interleague play, hasn't lost an All-Star game for more than a decade and has swept three of the last four World Series--because it is not some random, cyclical shift and it has huge implications for the game's future.

Alex Rodriguez and his Svengali, agent Scott Boras, have been taking a lot of grief for the ill-timed announcement of A-Rod's opting for free agency--upstaging baseball's biggest showcase, a World Series game the former Yankees third basemen couldn't bother to attend to pick up his Hank Aaron award as the American League's premier hitter. Boras, who almost never apologizes or looks back, has offered his regrets. But as it turns out, there was a very good reason A-Rod couldn't wait any longer to make his dash for freedom. If he had waited, it might have given lie to Boras' explanation of why his most famous client bolted the Yankees.

Boras said A-Rod jumped ship because of all the uncertainty surrounding the Yankees, with Joe Torre out as manager and the futures of the team's biggest stars, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte, unsettled. But Rodriguez had until 10 days after the World Series to make his decision on free agency. The Yankees are ready to announce Joe Girardi as their new manager and--who knows--might have resolved some of the other ambiguities in time for A-Rod's deadline.