If you are looking for justice in the Mitchell Report, you’ll find it on page 181: David Justice is named as someone who Kirk Radomski says bought two or three kits of HGH following the 2000 World Series.

Radomski, the former Mets clubhouse attendant, says that Justice paid by check although there is no cancelled check offered in evidence. David Justice has denied the allegations.

Justice proclaimed and Justice denied.

This appears in a section of the report titled “Information Regarding Purchases or Use of Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball.” The section catalogues 62 names, 23 of whom were active in the majors in 2007. Radomski provided the overwhelming majority of these names in his federal steroids case, in which he has pleaded guilty to providing drugs to numerous athletes. His naming of names is expected to have a softening effect on his sentencing that is now scheduled for Feb. 8, 2008.

In the past few days, some of the players named in this section have denied use of steroids or HGH, some have admitted use, and some have remained silent. In reading the report, the most remarkable thing is how uneven the evidence is, and yet all these players have been lumped together.

Mitchell claims he has the best evidence that he could find and that no one has been treated unfairly. I find the latter claim a dubious one, and I think it needlessly weakened the credibility of the report.

As to the report itself, what has it told us? That there is a problem in Major League Baseball with steroids and performance-enhancing drugs. By “problem,” the author of the report means that MLB players are using these substances. This is not exactly an earthshaking revelation.

In fact, we all know that this is the case in baseball, in the National Football League, indeed across the spectrum of sport, and it has been the case from the first time that someone found that taking a stimulant such as caffeine might improve performance. (If you have been a reader of these columns on PopPolitics, you know that I do not consider this as a great problem.)

More important to some, particularly the cable news industry and large segments of the media, it has provided a list of names to chew on. All that matters is that the names are there, not what the level of evidence is that justifies the naming. The fact that Roger Clemens is listed seems in some quarters to be the only thing that matters in the Mitchell Report. The New York bias operates even here.

The Mitchell Report is also one more reminder of the degree to which the baseball establishment has perfected the art of flagellation. No industry or sport has ever done more to defame its own product than baseball.

Some have criticized the players and the Players Association for refusing to cooperate with the Mitchell investigation. The fact that Mitchell was chosen by the commissioner who represents ownership, and the fact that Mitchell himself was on the board of the Red Sox, was reason enough for players to refuse to talk with the investigators. The Player’s Association recognized the Mitchell investigation for what it was — and wisely advised players not to cooperate.

It is not the job of the Players Association to enforce the rules of baseball or the laws of the United States. It is the job of the MLBPA or any union to represent the interests, both economic and legal, of its members in their dealings with management. If the rules of baseball or the laws of the United States have been broken, there are procedures to handle these violations.

The fact that the players have agreed to any testing is a mistake. The taking of fluids from the body without cause is an unreasonable search and seizure. It is also a violation of the Fifth Amendment. Political pressures and sandbagging by Commissioner Selig intimidated the players into this agreement. No doubt more of these pressures will follow the Mitchell Report.

Clearly the worst idea of all in the Mitchell report is to outsource drug testing and enforcement. One of the biggest mistakes in the history of the game was outsourcing power over baseball to an independent force named after a mountain in Georgia.

Owners regretted that decision for the next quarter century. Justice was only rarely served by Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was best known as a judge who had a basic disregard of the rights of defendants and for legal procedures.

A parallel to this mistake would be the appointment of someone like Dick Pound to ride herd on drug enforcement in baseball. Pound has established a solid reputation for the total disregard of the rights of individuals at the slightest hint of a drug violation. He could wreak havoc of the highest order if turned lose in this arena.

The Mitchell Report and the entire atmosphere surrounding the performance enhancement issue in baseball, or for that matter in any other sport, is a form of social hysteria. The concern for the children is evoked repeatedly on this issue, but it will not be players using drugs that entices the next generation of elite athletes. It will be the same thing that enticed this generation: the desire to reach the highest possible level in sport in search of wealth, fame, ego expansion, sex, and all those other rewards that come to the elite of sport in our times.

Athletes use drugs because they want that little extra edge. They know how easily it can all slip away in the face of injury or superior competition. They use drugs because the rewards are so great and they are human beings. They understand the basic message of the win-at-any-cost / winning-is-the-only-thing culture of sport. They learn early in their sports education to do whatever it takes.

Those who watch the elite athletes drive for perfection don’t really care how they get there. They want to see what the body can do, no matter what levels of technology and human science move them to the height of performance. I doubt there were many among those who watched McGwire and Sosa in their summer of home run achievement who felt cheated, despite the fact that both men were suspected of using performance-enhancement substances to achieve their success. Indeed, McGwire admitted to using andro and Sosa to using creatine, and neither admission kept people away from the ballpark.

If performance-enhancing drugs are viewed negatively, they should only be viewed as a symptom of a more basic distortion of values in the culture, rather than as the problem itself.

Treat the cause, not the symptom.