No Way Mitchell Hits Latest Pitch Out of Park

Those who think George Mitchell will achieve progress in the Middle East point to his record of robust diplomacy in Northern Ireland 10 years ago. One hopes, for the sake of peace, that Mitchell follows his work there and not a more recent example, Will Leitch writes for the New Republic: the shambolic Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball.

The Mitchell Report “was a shoddy, haphazard, shockingly scattershot document” that didn’t address the systemic problems of steroid use in baseball, writes Leitch, founder of the Deadspin sports blog. “And Mitchell just waltzed away, looking like the wise auk—which is an affront when you consider the Report’s five conclusions, all so obvious that even the dullest observer of baseball would have been aware of them before Mitchell spent a reported $20 million and 20 months putting them together.” (More Mitchell Report stories.)