Apparently, Gammons played at a charity concert the other night and performed a song he wrote about the Mitchell Report and steroids. A tasty excerpt:

Then one day I got a call from Mitchell's henchmen
Seems my name showed up where it shouldn't have been
Now I'm back at the Wal-Mart working midnight to nine
Playing beer league softball in lieu of ten years time
In lieu of ten years time

The Steroid Blues! We love it. Also at the concert: Bronson Arroyo, who took the opportunity to once again beg his way back to Boston. Reds fans have to just love that.

The Mitchell Report Song [Boston.com]
Dear Boston, I Miss You [Bostonist]

Our immediate observations, mostly of a hopefully amusing nature:

• He has a few weird facial ticks, and stumbles a lot, which is odd, considering the video is edited and could have been re-filmed.

• Thankfully, he doesn't have the streaks in his hair anymore.

• He's appropriately forceful and unequivocal, we think, and it's worth pointing out, like he does, that the Los Angeles Times story from last year about his appearance in the Jason Grimsley document, the one he vehemently denied, turned out to be false after all. He's denying even more fiercely here.

• Our favorite mental image, by far, is of one of Roger's children attempting to teach him how to use YouTube. WRClemens, "age 45," just joined on Saturday, and this is the only video. We're fairly certain this is the first time Clemens has ever heard of YouTube, and he's probably spent the last 48 hours getting caught up on Peanut Butter Jelly Time, the Star Wars kid and all the other Internet memes of the last five years. It's probably been a fun few days.

They call it the steroids social network. It's a good thing the graphic is well done, because I absolutely loathe the term "social network" and the concepts therein. If I cared what your interests were, I would hang out with you and discover them using actual social skills. That picture of you not looking at the camera doesn't make me believe you don't really care about having your picture taken, considering that I can see your arm holding the camera. And no, you're not my friend just because you found my listing online. Unless, of course, you're a fan of my work. Then let's do lunch sometime!

But the Radomski Social Network graph is broken up into "crews." So we have the "Brian McNamee Crew" (Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, David Justice, Chuck Knoblauch) and the "David Segui Crew" (Miguel Tejada, Brian Roberts), and so on. Chris Donnels has his own crew. As pissed as he must be that he was outed by Radomski, he has to feel honored to have his own crew.

Oddly enough, the player with the most degrees of separation from the center was one of the bombshell names, Miguel Tejada. He was referred by Adam Piatt, who was referred by F.P. Santangelo, who heard about his services from David Segui. Going the opposite direction, Tejada played in the 2002 All-Star game, whose broadcast had a "memorable moments" segment that was emceed by Ray Liotta, who appeared in the telecast of the 58th Annual Emmy Awards with Kevin Bacon.

The Steroids Social Network [Slate]

Actually, we're not sure something so unfocused can be classified as a "rant." Our favorite thing about Schilling's blog is that he often seems to forget the point of a sentence by the time he gets to the end of it. As for the names on the list, and Lord knows there's no shortage of those, I have feelings very strongly in some cases due to personal history, and opinions in many others. I've played, roomed and lived with some of these guys, and competed and gotten to know others. Wait ... what does that mean?

This stylistic "quirk" doesn't work well when discussing an issue as complicated as the Mitchell Report, which somehow just makes it more perfect. The "news" out of Schilling's post is that he called for Roger Clemens to give back his Cy Young awards. When you read the whole post, we guess he said that, but this was just a few words after saying, "my thought is that Roger will find a way in short order to organize a legal team to guarantee a retraction of the allegations made." Trying to strip a usable quote out of a Schilling blog post is a fool's errand.

That didn't make the post any less enjoyable than all of Schilling's posts. If your eyes are still in your head when you reach the end.

One Player's Take On The Mitchell Report [38 Pitches]

Hey, whatever works.

"You know, to be honest, I probably should stay away from it, so I'll have no comment, but to me I don't think it's really an issue. You know, all this stuff that's been going on for the last three years, the probing [of] guys, doing this and that, it's the kind of thing—Ooh, whoa, I'm driving, I almost got hit by a car!"

We have no better joke than Dan Steinberg's: "Upon receiving a follow-up question, Lo Duca did not change the topic by claiming he was in the middle of an asteroid attack."

Paul LoDuca Says Get Over It [DC Sports Bog]

Our question: Is this T-shirt more valuable now, or less?

But whatever, this Mitchell Report video from the brilliant minds at Black20 is much more fun. If 'Nightmare Ant' had made an appearance I think I would have lost it.

• Die, Baseball, Die. The sport should have been dead for years, and if the Mitchell report surprises anyone, then you, anyone, should be relegated to the salt mines along with people who like Family Guy and those who don't use their turn signals in traffic. OMG, people are suddenly just so much bigger now in like a year! If this shocked anyone after years of stats and norms being established with interminable death-march 162 game seasons...we mean, it would have marked a spurt not just in baseball's evolution, but humanity's. Sammy Sosa should have had Waterworld gills. Mark McGwire should have been telekinetic, and Albert Pujols should have had the ability to levitate (over the border! To Mexico! For illegal steroids!). [Every Day Should Be Saturday]

• Roger Goodell Reacts To The Mitchell Report. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! (sighs) (wipes away tears) Oh, God. Oh, God. Can't stop... laughing... Selig... so very dumb... such an amateur... (giggles) (calls Paul Tagliabue) Tags! Tags! Are you watching this?... I know!... That's what I did too!... It's fucking GREAT... Later. (hangs up) Tee hee hee! [Kissing Suzy Kolber]

• The List. Is it just me, or is Mo Vaughn the only Red Sox player (sans Brendan Donnelly) on the list? Something stinks up there in Beantown, and this time it's not just the Red Sox. [Thurman Munson Should Be In The Hall Of Fame]

• Roger Clemens Got Off Easy. When you line up both Bonds and Clemens, according to the strict letter of the law, neither had ever tested positive for anything at the time these separate instances broke — BALCO and Grimsley's admission. Yet everyone began bashing Bonds incessantly after BALCO, while no one really jumped on Clemens after multiple signs that he too was a user. [100 Percent Injury Rate]

• Fun With The Mitchell Report. A search for Barry Bonds in the pages of the Mitchell report has 91 results. Sammy Sosa has 1. BALCO appears 56 times. Bud Selig and Cocksucker has zero results. Circumstantial does not appear. Carolina Panthers results in zero occurrences. David Eckstein is not named. John Kruk and Donuts has zero results. The word Sex appears 3 times. Buttocks appears 5 times. Ass does not appear. Bud Selig appears 52 times. Correction: Ass appears 52 times. Soccer appears once. Bartolo Colon loves cake does not appear. Zorro does not appear. [Bugs And Cranks]

• Baseball's Mitchell Report A Platter Of Hearsay And Innuendo. The Mitchell Report has served the American public a platter filled with hearsay and innuendo that tarnishes the reputation of dozens of America's finest athletes and the sport they play for our entertainment. As far as we know, none of the players on Mitchell's list ever failed a drug test. Their alleged "crime" was being on someone else's list as a purchaser of performance-enhancing substances. Did they use those substances? Did it affect their performance? We will never know. [Roger Abrams, The Huffington Post]

• The Mitchell Report. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to feel. My head is cloudy. I guess there is good news to be found, if one had to find the silver lining. The good news is that this is finally all out in the open. I also think that there should be another report — we can call it The Milano Report for now, recognizing and celebrating the players of the steroid era that didn't succumb to the pressure of using illegal performance enhancing substances. Please revisit my "Steroid And Botox Era" blog entry for more of my views on this topic. [Touch Em All With Alyssa Milano]

• A Dark Day Ends. I guess I just don't really understand smearing a few players rather than not keeping it more general. Especially if the majority of what you learned came from mostly two sources. Don't get me wrong, I don't feel bad for those named in the report. If they cheated, they should be named, but my feeling is that naming so many prominent players just gives the impression that pretty much everyone was doing it but just didn't happen to use the same supplier. [Athletics Nation]

• Random Thoughts On The Mitchell Report. One question people have been asking me is, "Why does Congress even give a hoot what baseball does?" The answer, objectively, is that major league baseball is a monopoly that gets an exemption from anti-trust law from Congress. That is to say, Congress allows MLB to continue on as a monopoly as long as they're good girls and boys and keep their noses clean. Essentially, this gives them oversight of baseball. Maybe not to the degree that the police have oversight of your driving habits, but definitely to the extent that your parents did when you were sixteen. Sure, it was legal for you to drive...as long as Dad would let you borrow the car. [UmpBump]

How delicious, then, that the pound of flesh belonged to Roger Clemens! Perhaps the most universally loathed baseball player — A-Rod has decades to go to catch up, and one senses his problem is more that he's kind of dopey, rather than a dick like Clemens — has finally gotten the comeuppance many wished upon him. Hating Roger Clemens: It's not just for baseball fans anymore!

As Stark points out, the evidence against Clemens is essentially he said/he said, but, frankly ... WHO CARES? The Mitchell Report was gonna nail someone to the wall and ruin their reputation forever. And it turned out to be Roger Clemens! Bad day for baseball? What? Says who?

Many Legacies Will Be Tarnished Forever [ESPN]

Well, perhaps not, but we've devoured pretty much the whole thing — it's a quick read — and we can say with 100 percent certainty that we are no closer to the truth about steroids in Major League Baseball over the last 20 years than we were this morning. (The Sporting Blog states this in the plainest, most eloquent way possible.) Bud Selig gave his press conference of empty platitudes, Suzyn Waldman stopped touching herself (as Drew memorably put it), Theo Epstein took a couple of hits and we all got to titter and speculate for a while. (And we got to see Jose Canseco kicked out of the press conference.)

But honestly: This is what MLB paid $20 million for? This took nearly two years? Essentially, Sen. Mitchell has two sources, a bunch of media reports, Jose Canseco's book and every player in baseball (save two) ignoring his requests to talk. The only reason Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte are in here is because they were unfortunate enough to have acquaintances who had no choice but to talk. The report has brought us no closer, because nothing possibly could. We don't think this is going to bring us any closure, because the report is so obviously not comprehensive.

Everyone wants us to move on. That's fine with us; we've been wanting to do that for a while anyway. But the people in this document are guilty scapegoats; they're the unlucky folks who got caught. (Kind of.) Is that enough to discontinue suspicion of everyone? They hope so. We highly doubt it.

(Huge, huge thanks to Greg Lindsay, Noah Robischon and Matt Sussman for their help today. Now, we're gonna go sleep for a few days.)

To us, this is the most amazing section of the whole Mitchell Report. Essentially, Dr. Robert Millman, the medical director of MLB, told a doctor who had criticized Mark McGwire's use of andro that "everyone in baseball is irritated with you" and "if you don't shut up, they're going to sue you.

And that's not all. Another great section:

Bill Stoneman, who retired in 2007 as the general manager of the Los Angeles Angels, had a similar recollection of a presentation by Drs. Millman and Solomon. He remembered wondering at the time why Major League Baseball had permitted the presentation, which to his recollection included the assertion that there was no evidence that anabolic steroids were bad for you. He said that the baseball executives in attendance were universally frustrated with the message of leniency that was being conveyed.

That's pretty amazing.

The Baltimore Orioles traded Miguel Tejada to the Houston Astros yesterday. Their timing was impeccable.

Ladies and gentleman, we present you with Giants general manager Brian Sabean, the direct polar opposite of a whistleblower.

This is a personal one, so forgive us, but here's where Sen. Mitchell came down on Rick Ankiel.

Here's some really gruesome descriptions of "future Hall of Famer" Roger Clemens being injected with steroids.

First, here's the memo from the MLBPAA telling them not to cooperate with the Mitchell Investigation.

Here's the letter Paul LoDuca send to Kirk Radomski after getting a returned check.

All the players listed in the section VIII. B.: "Information Regarding Purchases or Use of Performance Enhancing Substances by Players in Major League Baseball" (section 3 is "Radomski¹s Distribution of Performance Enhancing Substances to Major League Baseball Players")

Lenny Dykstra
David Segui
Larry Bigbie
Brian Roberts
Jack Cust
Tim Laker
Josias Manzanillo
Todd Hundley
Mark Carreon
Hal Morris
Matt Franco
Rondell White
Roger Clemens
Andy Pettitte
Chuck Knoblauch
Jason Grimsley
Gregg Zaun
David Justice
F.P. Santangelo
Glenallen Hill
Mo Vaughn
Denny Neagle
Ron Villone
Ryan Franklin
Chris Donnels
Todd Williams
Phil Hiatt
Todd Pratt
Kevin Young
Mike Lansing
Cody McKay
Kent Mercker
Adam Piatt
Miguel Tejada
Jason Christiansen
Mike Stanton
Stephen Randolph
Jerry Hairston
Paul Lo Duca
Adam Riggs
Bart Miadich
Fernando Vina
Kevin Brown
Eric Gagne
Mike Bell
Matt Herges
Gary Bennett, Jr.
Jim Parque
Brendan Donnelly
Chad Allen
Jeff Williams
Howie Clark
Nook Logan

Section IX. B."Alleged Internet Purchases of Performance Enhancing Substances By Players in Major League Baseball"

Rick Ankiel, Paul Byrd, Jay Gibbons, Troy Glaus, Jose Guillen, Jerry Hairston, Jr., Gary Matthews, Jr., and Scott Schoeneweis, and former players David Bell, Jose Canseco, Jason Grimsley, Darren Holmes, John Rocker, Ismael Valdez, Matt Williams, and Steve Woodard."

BALCO FOLK

Marvin Benard
Barry Bonds
Bobby Estalella
Jason Giambi
Jeremy Giambi
Benito Santiago
Gary Sheffield
Randy Velarde

—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-

Wrapping up live blog: Here's the complete list of players mentioned in the report. And updates throughout the day, obviously.

2:30: Mitchell wraps up and introduces Professor McClaren (sp?) who apparently helped him out. We're gonna dig through the document some more now.

2:27: "Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades shares to some extent in the responsibility. There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged."

2:26: "The minority of players who used such substances were wrong." Thanks.

2:24: So this is odd: Mitchell is basically undercutting his entire report. He seems to see it more as an historical document that has little to do with the actual game today. Hmm.

2:21: More than half of the players in the report are no longer in the league. We wonder if that includes Clemens.

2:18: Mitchell says that Bud Selig shouldn't punish players for past transgressions. Interesting.

2:16: Fittingly, Mitchell says that there's ton more work to be done. Apparently. He's coming down incredibly hard on the Players Association; in the report, there's a memo from the MLBPA telling players not to talk to Mitchell Report.

2:15: Red Sox fans relax: The only one of your guys in there is Eric Gagne. Which we doubt will break your heart.

2:14: Report found no evidence of Paul Byrd or David Bell.

2:12: Nook Logan is oddly in the report. Rick Ankiel is essentially cleared by the report.

2:10: Looking through the names, most of the big names in the earlier list are not there. But Clemens definitely is. "Eleven players admitted Rodonski gave him banned substances." David Justice is in the report, by the way, as is Mo Vaughn.

2:09: Mitchell says the former Yankees trainer named several players, though he's not gonna give names. Time to keep using the PDF search function.

2:07: Mitchell is talking about the kids. They set a bad example for the kids. Got it. Still scanning the document.

2:05: A quick scan of the report does not show Albert Pujols' name. So you know.

2:04: He says steroid use is down, but HGH is up. "This has not been an isolated problem. Each of the 30 clubs has players who have been involved at some point of their careers."

2:03: Mitchell says no material changes in his report after MLB's review three days ago. "For more than a decade, there has been widespread use of performance enhancement drugs in violation of baseball policy."

2:01: As he talks about all the people who helped him, here's the report.

2 p.m.: There's Sen. George. Here goes.

1:55 p.m.: Jeremy Schapp says "Clemens obtained steroids from McNamee" and that "the steroids had a pretty good effect on me." Also, there are "personal checks from Fernando Vina, Miguel Tejada, Rondell White, Paul LoDuca" ... ooh boy, here we go.

Pregame: Jose Canseco is in the room. Awesome. It's the sports equivalent of releasing an AIDS study with that dude who had sex with a monkey hanging around.

But, if you're curious, here's the list of players supposedly mentioned in the report, according to just about every email we've received. It could very likely be one of those Web urban legends that somehow got around, like when everyone thought Scott Baio was dead. It probably is, actually. (We mean, come on: The list has Rich Garces on it.) We'll know soon enough, but, for now, for "fun" ... After the jump.

(UPDATE: A source inside baseball says this list is "not entirely accurate." Emphasis ours.)

(SECOND UPDATE: WNBC apparently has the same list, some names of which have been disputed by baseball. But not all. And less than two hours to go!)

(ONLY UPDATE THAT REALLY MATTERS: Here's the full Mitchell Report.)

Brady Anderson
Manny Alexander
Rick Ankiel
Jeff Bagwell
Barry Bonds
Aaron Boone
Rafael Bettancourt
Bret Boone
Milton Bradley
David Bell
Dante Bichette
Albert Belle
Paul Byrd
Wil Cordero
Ken Caminiti
Mike Cameron
Ramon Castro
Jose and Ozzie Canseco
Roger Clemens
Paxton Crawford
Wilson Delgado
Lenny Dykstra
Johnny Damon
Carl Everett
Kyle Farnsworth
Ryan Franklin
Troy Glaus
Rich Garces
Jason Grimsley
Troy Glaus
Juan Gonzalez
Eric Gagne
Nomar Garciaparra
Jason Giambi
Jeremy Giambi
Jose Guillen
Jay Gibbons
Juan Gonzalez
Clay Hensley
Jerry Hairston
Felix Heredia, Jr.
Darren Holmes
Wally Joyner
Darryl Kile
Matt Lawton
Raul Mondesi
Mark McGwire
Guillermo Mota
Robert Machado
Damian Moss
Abraham Nunez
Trot Nixon
Jose Offerman
Andy Pettitte
Mark Prior
Neifi Perez
Rafael Palmiero
Albert Pujols
Brian Roberts
Juan Rincon
John Rocker
Pudge Rodriguez
Sammy Sosa
Scott Schoenweiis
David Segui
Alex Sanchez
Gary Sheffield
Miguel Tejada
Julian Tavarez
Fernando Tatis
Mo Vaughn
Jason Varitek
Ismael Valdes
Matt Williams
Kerry Wood.

We're about three-and-a-half hours away from the release of the Mitchell Report — or as we prefer to call it, "Whose Career Can We Ruin, And By "Ruin" We Mean, "Hurt The Reputation Of While Still Paying Him Millions" — and there's not much time left for guessing games. Because the Internet was invented for unfettered and unsubstantiated speculation, we encourage you to make your last-second guesses now. Then you can take a bunch of credit in three hours if you're right.

We repeat: The only real purpose of this report is for everyone to scream "Gotcha!" for the poor souls unable to avoid its pages. So we might as well all play along.

As you know by now, "Mike and Mike" reported this morning that Brian McNamee, personal trainer for Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, told Mitchell report investigators he gave Clemens steroids prior to joining the team and while he was a Yankee. So you'll see him. Maybe. Here we go.

We'll be live-blogging Mitchell's press conference today at 2 p.m., so, you know, in case you don't have a TV.

Tomorrow, at 2 p.m., The Mitchell Report will be released, though you can be sure someone — probably the New York Daily News will grab a copy of it early. It supposedly contains "60-80 names," and we're sure there are some nervous folks in the income tax-free burbs of Florida right now.

We appreciated this look at possible player reactions to being included in the report.

1. I did it. (That will be a short list.)
2. Didn't do it, don't know how they got my name, I'm ticked.
3. It was prescribed, and I did it under a doctor's supervision.
4. No comment.

It's gonna be a wild day tomorrow. Everybody get a good night's sleep, and strap in.

We brought this up in our Barry Bonds post, but the only way the Mitchell Report is going to be a disappointment is if it doesn't give us enough blood. It is, by definition, not going to be comprehensive, so in that respect, it will clearly fall short. But that's not what people want it for; people want the Mitchell Report because it will allow us to put a few more pelts on the wall, allow us to have a few more people to boo. That's really the only thing it can do. If it just tosses out a few obscure, low-level players as sacrificial lambs, no one will believe a word it says, and if it accuses everyone but a small smidgen of players as juicing, everyone will wonder why they left out that small smidgen.

We understand the report is meant to alleviate the sneaking suspicion the average fan has that all players are juicing. But because of the report's limited resources, that's impossible, unless it just starts crucifying people without any evidence, which is unlikely (but delicious!). The report exists only to shock us, to say, "Holy crap that's Roger Clemens Albert Pujols Alex Rodriguez Axl Rose's name! Whoa! Boo!" That's it. That might be enough.

Baseball's Christmas Gift: The Mitchell Report [SI.com]

Mitchell has denied that he was responsible for the leak that happened right before Game 7 of the ALCS — he said, oddly, that he "had no prior knowledge of those allegations," which makes us think the Mitchell Report is going to suck — but it's perfectly reasonable, we think, to ask: Mitchell doesn't have any alternate agendas, does he? Don't get us wrong: We don't think he's going to be strategically releasing steroid names of Rockies over the next week. But because the whole investigation has been done in extreme secrecy, it's reasonable to wonder whether everything's on the up and up, who's leaking what, what's going on.

Because Byrd's right: He is a Red Sox guy.

Mitchell Investigation Raises Questions [Fox Sports]
Mitchell Report Petition [It Is High ... It Is Far ...]