Report To Detail Drug Use In Baseball

Mitchell complained last winter that he wasn't getting the cooperation of MLB players, but his report was bolstered in recent months by interviews with and evidence from former New York Mets batboy and convicted steroid dealer Kirk J. Radomski, who as part of a federal plea deal agreed to provide information on his baseball connections to Mitchell's group. Mitchell also met with the Albany, N.Y., district attorney's office, which is leading an investigation into drugs distributed illegally by Internet pharmacies and which has implicated several players.

Only one current player, Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees, is known to have met with Mitchell and his legal team from DLA Piper, an international law firm with an office in New York.

Mitchell has said he will not make recommendations on any disciplinary action, leaving that to Selig and the Major League Baseball Players Association to hash out. The matter could be a challenging one, as the current collective bargaining agreement does not specifically address performance-enhancing drug violations that don't involve positive tests or criminal charges.

Selig hinted at the action he would take last week when he handed out 15-day suspensions to Jay Gibbons of the Baltimore Orioles and Jose Guillen of the Kansas City Royals based on interviews with the players and information from the Albany investigators. Neither player has been identified as having failed a drug test. Selig spared four other players because of "insufficient evidence" that those players used performance-enhancing drugs in violation of the rules in place at the time.

Under the current drug policy, players who test positive for the first time are suspended for 50 games.

In recent weeks, baseball has been consumed with a speculative parlor game that parallels its offseason tradition of trade rumors and free agent negotiations -- namely, guessing at which superstars' names might show up in the Mitchell report, thus taking their place alongside Bonds, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and others as the most significant names linked to the steroid scandal.

The issue has sullied Selig's recent tenure, an otherwise prosperous period for the sport marked by burgeoning economic growth and unprecedented labor peace.

"I think we all have concern about what effect [the report's release] is going to have on our game," Orioles Manager Dave Trembley said last week. "If the information comes out, I'll be glad it comes out now and [not on] the first day of spring training. Let's . . . get this out of the way, and let's start 2008 on a positive note."

Some observers say they are troubled by Mitchell's ties to Selig -- they are longtime friends, and from 1998 to 2000 Mitchell served on Selig's panel on the game's economic health -- and to the Boston Red Sox, who list Mitchell as a director on their front office roster. Although Mitchell has no ownership stake in the franchise, as has been erroneously reported, he drew compensation from the team until beginning his investigation in March 2006.

But Kenneth M. Duberstein, a White House chief of staff during the Reagan administration who served with Mitchell on a committee that investigated bribery allegations involving Olympics officials in 1999, dismissed concerns about Mitchell's connections to baseball.

"He knows how to dot the i's and cross the t's," Duberstein said of the Democrat from Maine, who also is a former federal prosecutor. "He's absolutely methodical. He builds facts one upon the next. Mitchell is so buttoned-down that he seldom makes a mistake."

Staff writer Thomas Boswell contributed to this report.