Mitchell Report Names Clemens, Bonds, Tejada

Thursday, December 13th 2007, 8:08 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada and Andy Pettitte were named in the long-awaited Mitchell Report on Thursday, an All-Star roster linked to steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs that put a question mark _ if not an asterisk _ next to some of baseball's biggest moments.

Barry Bonds, already under indictment on charges of lying to a federal grand jury about steroids, and Gary Sheffield also showed up in baseball's most infamous lineup since the Black Sox scandal.

The report culminated a 20-month investigation by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, hired by commissioner Bud Selig to examine the Steroids Era.

Read the report, click here.

``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.''

Eric Gagne, Jason Giambi, Troy Glaus, Gary Matthews Jr., Jose Guillen, Brian Roberts, Paul Lo Duca and Rick Ankiel were among other current players named in the report. Some were linked to Human Growth Hormone, others to steroids.

Clemens was singled out in nearly nine pages, with much of the information on the seven-time Cy Young Award winner coming from former New York Yankees major league strength and conditioning coach Brian McNamee. More than a dozen Yankees, past and present, were among the 75-plus players identified.

``According to McNamee, from the time that McNamee injected Clemens with Winstrol through the end of the 1998 season, Clemens' performance showed remarkable improvement,'' the report said. ``During this period of improved performance, Clemens told McNamee that the steroids 'had a pretty good effect' on him.''

McNamee also told investigators that ``during the middle of the 2000 season, Clemens made it clear that he was ready to use steroids again. During the latter part of the regular season, McNamee injected Clemens in the buttocks four to six times with testosterone from a bottle labeled either Sustanon 250 or Deca-Durabolin.''

Mitchell urged Selig to hold off on punishing players in the report ``except in those cases where he determines that the conduct is so serious that discipline is necessary to maintain the integrity of the game.''

Several stars named in the report could pay the price in Cooperstown, much the way Mark McGwire was kept out of the Hall of Fame this year merely because of steroids suspicion.

``Former commissioner Fay Vincent told me that the problem of performance-enhancing substances may be the most serious challenge that baseball has faced since the 1919 Black Sox scandal,'' Mitchell said in the 409-page report.

``The illegal use of anabolic steroids and similar substances, in Vincent's view, is 'cheating of the worst sort.' He believes that it is imperative for Major League Baseball to 'capture the moral high ground' on the issue and, by words and deeds, make it clear that baseball will not tolerate the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.''

Kevin Brown, Benito Santiago, Lenny Dykstra, Chuck Knoblauch, David Justice and Mo Vaughn were among former players named.

``We identify some of the players who were caught up in this drive to gain a competitive advantage,'' the report said. ``Other investigations will no doubt turn up more names and fill in more details, but that is unlikely to significantly alter the description of baseball's `steroids era' as set forth in this report.''

Mitchell is a director of the Boston Red Sox, and some questioned whether that created a conflict.

``Judge me by my work,'' Mitchell said. ``You will not find any evidence of bias, special treatment, for the Red Sox or anyone else. That had no effect on this investigation or this report, none whatsoever.''

Giambi, under threat of discipline from Selig, was the only current player known to have cooperated with the Mitchell investigation.

``The players' union was largely uncooperative for reasons that I thought were largely understandable,'' Mitchell said.