Why I Should Have Been Named in the Mitchell Report

Before going forward, understand that this is NOT a running-related post, although it’s sports-related, unless you consider things I think about while running which has nothing to do with running running-related…if that’s the case, then you need to head out the door and go running yourself so you can come up with your own things to think about, like what all the random numbers on top of the Circuit City at Union Square actually mean or how our much maligned NBA basketball team, the New York Knickerbockers got its name. (I hope you weren’t expecting me to answer any of that…but drop me a line if you really want to know and I’ll see what I can do.) Anyway, you’ve been forewarned.

On December 13th 2007, in the midst of a Northeastern storm in the local area, the Mitchell Report was released. For those of you who were living under a rock for the past few days, are living in a foreign country or a foreign planet, or just don’t follow sports in general or baseball specifically (have I missed anyone?), the Mitchell Report was the result of an investigation untaken by former Senate majority leader George Mitchell into the use of performance-enhancing substances (namely anabolic steroids and hGH, or human growth hormone) in Major League Baseball. All together, 88 players were named in this report as having used one of these substances at one time or another during their career. Among them were some major perennial All-Stars like Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejeda, Jason Giambi, and Eric Gagne, just to name a few. And as I have spent the majority of my weekend reading the 409 page report, listening to lawyers and baseball writers discuss the legal ramifications of this document, and watching the named players one-by-one either admit or deny these allegations, I am left with only one sentiment.

I am saddened, no, angered, no, downright insulted by this report. I am that way not because the Mitchell Report threatens the integrity of the game; no, I’m not much worried about that because come Opening Day, I, along with 50,000 of my neighbors will still be at Shea to cheer for our Mets. After all, we’re baseball fans, and it takes much more than some congressional report on some allegations of steroid use made by an ex-trainer on the team to keep us away from the game we love. It’s not even that I am forced by this report to reevaluate my love and admiration for players old and new that I have grown up with. I am hopping mad today because the Mitchell Report is grossly incomplete. It is missing the accounts of the one person who knew the most about hGH, androstenedione, and testosterone; the one who’ve spent countless days and nights in the laboratory perfecting the purification technique for all these hormones, and the one who had the connections and the means for the distribution and administration of these substances. That person might even have been subject 0, the one who lit the spark that started the fire. I don’t like to brag, folks, but that person they’re missing is me.

“Why you Laminator?” you may ask. “What have you done to deserve a mention?” Well, under the pretenses of a crock medical degree and fellowship training at an institution you might have never heard off, I have used, abused, modified, designed, purified, isolated, sniffed, and otherwise played with all of these “performance enhancing substances” during the past four years. Okay, granted, most of this work was done only for bench research and was injected only into mice and rats in carefully designed and control experiments, but that’s beside the point. In addition, I’ve written more than a hundred prescriptions for hGH for short stature, testosterone and “The Clear” to increase willie size (yes that willie) and DHEA to help grow out bush hair, and I’m sure more than a few of those might have fallen into the wrong hands and ended up in the bodies of some of those people who were actually named in the report. Okay, it’s not likely because the prescriptions for controlled substances, which all of those are, require certificates of authenticity and are carefully monitored and tracked which means I’d be in deep do-do if any ever gets lost, but it is at least possible, and so should be thoroughly investigated.

Yet, there’s a third reason why my name should have been included in that report. Consider these numbers:

2005 – Miles Ran: 419; Half Marathon – 1:40:26; Marathon – 3:26:42

2006 – Miles Ran: 545; Half Marathon – 1:35:59; Marathon – 3:11:33

2007 – Miles Ran: 963; Half Marathon – 1:28:06; Marathon – 3:08:18

In case you haven’t figured it out, those are my running stats for the past three years, and clearly you can see a dramatic improvement in both times and distances over the past two years. Conventional wisdom says I’ve just been running more and training harder, but isn’t it just a little suspicious how the miles have doubled since 2005 and all my race times have increased by more than 10 minutes in the interim at a time when my body is supposed to be breaking down and not functioning as well as it used to. In my estimation, my rate of performance enhancement makes the pre- and post- BALCO Barry Bonds numbers look rather putrid in comparison. (It’s not his fault though, he just didn’t know how to use ‘em right.) How come I didn’t get investigated and invited to speak with Senator Mitchell? Instead he asks some ex-clubhouse employee (Kirk Radomski) and a former Yankees personal trainer (Brian McNamee) for information in exchange for immunity. I think I could have been enveloped in a shroud of controversy and yet still make a more credible witness than either of those bums.

“But he’s not interesting in running, only baseball.” You might argue. Well, if he’d ask me, and offered me a chance to speak, without the risk of future litigation or prosecution, I’d tell him how running might have been just a front I use to distribute my goodies amongst the constituents, or how when I go to the ballpark, I might actually enter via a separate gate for MDs that gives me exclusive access to the trainers and bat boys who sees to it that the candies goes to those who have a sweet tooth. It was all a carefully designed, well-orchestrated process that the rest of the world now won’t get to see because Senator Mitchell didn’t bother to ask me to participate in his investigation. His lack of judgment is a shame honestly because I would’ve done just about anything and told him everything to clean up the game I loved as a kid growing up. All I’m saying is, he should’ve asked.

I’m so angry right now that I ought to write a letter to Congress to complain. No, better yet, maybe I should just do what O.J. did and write a book, “If I Were To Be A hGH Distributor…”