Dodgers Players Feature Prominently In Mitchell Report

I'm not going to bother linking to it as it's everywhere like CNN and ESPN. Despite my wishes in my last posting, there are lotsa dodgers. Front office discussions of many players also appear in the report. On the good side though the dodgers (and Giants) were one of two teams back in the mid-80's that wanted to make drug testing (street drugs) as a mandatory part of their contract. I'm assuming because of Howe, Welch, and a few others (p. 83 of the pdf or 35 going by the document's numbering).

The dodgers team doctor was prominent in a meeting with the commissioner in 2002 about their opinions of the prevalence of steroids in the sport (p. 101 of the pdf file). Belcher is mentioned commenting on the issue at 119 of the pdf saying that PED's are more to account for the increased than inferior pitching.

Good 'ole L.A. Times is quoted a bit in the report as well in the sportswriter section.

Our current trainer, Stan Conte, is covered pretty extensively in his days having to deal with Anderson and Bonds. Seems like giants front office wanted no part of knowing Bonds was doing anything.

There were also some notes taken by dodgers scouts that included that a potential free agent target in Estalella included an assessment that he probably used steroids (179). Todd Steyler a former Dukes (AAA) strength guy for the dodgers gave up some info (193) eventually coming out with the beauty of organizing some minor leaguers together and pretty much encouraging them to use be in shape for a september callup. He stated that he got desensitized to the fact that players were using steroids (279). Former dodgers trainer Matt Wilson told a pitcher to look up steroid info on his own and not to address the subject with him (240-241). I read most of the extremely long report and here are the former dodgers I can remember offhand:

1. Eric Gagne
2. Gary Sheffield
3. Paul Lo Duca
4. Todd Hundley
5. Adam Riggs
6. Matt Herges
7. Kevin Brown
8. Guillermo Mota
9. Jeremy Giambi
10. Larry Bigbie
11. Ismael Valdez
12. F.P. Santangelo
13. Chris Donnels
14. Todd Williams
15. Phil Hiatt
16. Jeff Williams
17. Ricky Stone
18. Mike Judd

I think that's all of them. That's a lot of guys. The report mentions how great the dodgers executives are at taking notes, which ended up being used. I'm assuming that they voluntarily cooperated by supplying any internal notes that discussed steroid use in the evaluation of players. The examples of scouts and/or executives evaluating players, not just by the dodgers, are pretty frank and seem to suggest that steroids were rampant and everyone in the game knew it and had to look out for it. It seems also they knew how to look out for it. One example of the dodgers backing off Jay Gibbons. An Orioles player that the dodgers thought was a good fit but-for signs of steroid use. Another being the Red Sox's evaluation Gagne.

Now that I've got almost all of the mentions of the dodgers organization in the report I'm going to let everything I read sink in and try to make more sense of it, even though, as many of the big guys are saying up on the podium today, it's time to move foward now.