Does Anybody Really Care?

According to reports all over the media, tomorrow will be M-Day, so to speak. At least it's the day when performance enhancing drug investigator George Mitchell will release his "independent" and "impartial" report.

Do I want to know who is on the list? Sure, I guess. But I'm not the type of guy that cares what athletes do when they aren't on the field. Maybe female sports fans will like this more since the fairer sex seems to be what keeps publications like People, In Style and Us Weekly in business.

I'm sure there are going to be names on there. Probably some guys you've even heard of, but not that many. I don't think it's going to be as big as some are making it out to be. Watch it turn out to have 85% minor league players and players that have retired in the last two years.

I wonder how many Red Sox will be on there since Mitchell is a part of the Sox board of trustees or something like that. He's maintained that he hasn't been paid by the Sox since then, but what is he going to go back to when he's done with his investigation? I'm fairly certain you won't see too many Sox on the list.

The chasm between the players union and baseball's owners and probably didn't help matters at all. Mitchell didn't even have any subpoena power during the last year and a half. So I'm also guessing that what he found doesn't even really go that deep.

It all comes down to this. How much do you, the fan, really care if players are juicing or not? Am I personally going to stop watching baseball, or writing about it? Probably not. Am I going to stop going out to Kauffman Stadium to watch the Royals or plan trips to Boston to see the Sox? Definitely not. Am I going to lose some respect for the game? Who knows? Depends on what comes out. I'm not going to lie, my interest in the sport waivered for a couple years after the strike in 1994, but I didn't stop watching completely.

If you care that players are cheating, don't watch. If you don't really care that much, then this report probably matters about as much to you as how many kids Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are adopting from third world countries.

Saying all that, I know I'll sit down and read whatever they put out online about the report itself because I'm a dork like that. I'd like to have a conversation with my buddies about this and know more than they do because I'm an asshole like that.

In any event, this is just another thing to write about during a slow spot in the middle of the week in the baseball world. For now, this is all it means to me at the moment.