Boys and Girls, Your Baseball Heroes

The Mitchell Report--a.k.a. the Baseball Hall of Fame Bucket List--was announced on Thursday, tarnishing forever the reputation of many current and former Major League players, activating armies of lawyers and public relations personnel, and, most significantly, befouling the innocent souls of confused and weeping children throughout the world.

Confirming rumors that circulated beforehand, New York Yankees Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte are two of the biggest names revealed to be steroids users (the inclusion of Barry Bonds on the list is about as surprising as if he were not voted "World's Most Pleasant Sports Personality")--which is just about all I, as a devout Boston Red Sox fan, could have asked for this Christmas (although that's not to say it wouldn't have been nice to see A-Rod's name, too); another relative bombshell is Miguel Tejada.

Given that George Mitchell sits on the Red Sox' board of directors, many had been curious as to whether that fact would influence his investigate panel's findings. Though it had been rumored that the report would name undead burn victim Julian Tavarez and team captain Jason Varitek (my dismay at the latter possibility was worsened by the fear that I may have unknowingly predicted it [first photo caption]), the only recent Red Sox players on the list are pitchers Brendan Donnelly and Eric Gagne...neither inclusion representing any skin off Sox fans' backs because (1) Gagne is on the Brewers now, (2) he was terrible during his one partial season in Boston, and (3) nobody cares about Brendan Donnelly.

The Red Sox win again!

[To save you the trouble of slogging through the full, 409-page report, Deadspin has helpfully compiled the list of named names.]

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Boooooooooooooo...

...oooooooooooooooo.

That Lawyer's in Trouble if Barry Bonds Ever Gets His All-Naturally Grotesquely Enlarged Hands on Him

The lawyer did it.

That's the word out of San Francisco, where today defense attorney Troy Ellerman--who has represented both the Bay Area Laboratory Co-op (BALCO) founder Victor Conte and its vice president, James Valente, in the investigation into the company's illegal activities as part of a federal steroid probe--agreed to plead guilty to leaking secret transcripts of grand jury testimony from an earlier phase of the investigation to San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada. Apparently, Ellerman wasn't satisfied with the fact that he'd already guided both of the aforementioned clients to guilty pleas (the same plea that pretty much anyone who's ever been associated with BALCO has made...with one notable, bloated-skulled exception), so he decided to go the extra mile by falling on his sword. That guy must really hate Barry Bonds.

Williams and Fainaru-Wada, who used the information they found in the documents--such as the fact that baseball star Jason Giambi and sprinter Tim Montgomery openly admitted to having used steroids--to write a number of stories for the paper in 2004 and later the book Game of Shadows, which offered highly incriminating evidence against MLB-record-thief and all-around a-hole Bonds regarding his unbelievably obvious use of illegal performance-enhancing substances (it was also, surprisingly, kind of boring), had been facing jail time for refusing to divulge their source. Now they're off the hook while the finally-revealed man behind the curtain, Ellerman, will be going to prison for two years.

Personally, I think he should be getting a parade--but NOT one for "Most Reliable Lawyer Ever". I presume Victor Conte would agree with the latter condition.