It’s rare that I find myself dumbfounded. One time was certainly the moment a few months ago when an old friend from college told me he was gay. I was pretty awestruck when I realized that Christina Aguilera had gone way past Britney Spears on the attractiveness scale (something I never thought possible).

This brings us to the Mitchell Report; I wondered which Cincinnati Reds I would see listed there. I expected to see Ron Gant, perhaps Bret Boone. It wasn’t just the huge, muscle-bound guys that were listed, though. There were many pitchers in the report (especially that were tied to the Reds), most of them in the twilight of their careers. There were also a lot of thinner guys, many of them that hit for average rather than power – chief among them was Hal Morris.

If you had me list a group of Reds players for the past 20 years that would be suspected of purchasing (and the assumption is that they then used) steroids or HGH, Morris would have been near the bottom of that list. He just didn’t fit the body type I’ve associated with those products. It’s time to rethink our assumptions about who (and how many people) in baseball may have ‘roided up to stay competitive. It’s clearly not as obvious as we once thought. Which means steroid / HGH use was probably more prevalent than we ever thought.

It just goes to show you that people will do anything to stay competitive or maintain their livelihood. I think that the use of those drugs was wrong and must have been seen as cheating in the minds of those that took them. I can’t say that I blame those players or that I can understand the choices they were forced to make. The whole thing is unfortunate. My hope is that MLB finds a way to test, agrees on a policy to test, then enforces the rules. That way we can all move on and put this era behind us.

Cincinnati Reds Players Listed in Mitchell Report

Ryan Jorgenson
Josias Manzanillo (I do not remember this guy at all)
Hal Morris
Denny Neagle
Ryan Franklin
Todd Williams
Kent Mercker
Mike Stanton
Mike Bell
Ricky Stone
Scott Schoeneweis
Benito Santiago

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