With the winter meetings fast approaching, let’s talk about the one thing that has been looming over the baseball offseason:  The Mitchell Report.   Earlier reports had suggested that the study on steroid abuse within baseball led by former majority leader Senator George Mitchell could be released by the end of this year.   Any potential free agent or trade candidate will undoubtedly lose value if linked to this report.

On that note, today comes a story out of FloridaToday.com about former Reds and Marlins trainer Larry Starr.  Starr was a trainer for 30 years and claims that he warned MLB about rampant steroid abuse two decades ago.  Says Starr:  “I have notes from the Winter Meetings where the owners group and the players’ association sat in meetings with the team physicians and team trainers. I was there. And team physicians stood up and said, ‘Look, we need to do something about this. We’ve got a problem here if we don’t do something about it.’ That was in 1988.”

Starr says he won’t name names but says some teams had up to 40% of their players using performance enhancing drugs, and that by the late 80’s, “20%-30%” of the entire league was using.   Starr said, “When Mark McGwire was discovered taking androstenedione, when that hit ESPN, four players walked into my office within an hour and asked, ‘Where can I get androstenedione?’ ”

Starr grew very concerned with particular players but says he wasn’t able to protect the players as much as he could because the league refused to acknowledge and tackle the problem.  He doesn’t blame the players for using the system.  He seems to blame the league for enabling them.

It’s a great article by David Jones.  I recommend reading it in it’s entirety as a good warm-up for what’s ahead with the Mitchell Report fallout.

Filed under: Cincinnati Reds, Florida Marlins, St. Louis Cardinals