Friday, March 31, 2006

Conflict of Interest?

George Mitchell, who was hired to do an "independent" investigation of steroid use in baseball seems like a decent, hardworking guy. One problem though: he's a partial owner of the Red Sox. Even if Mitchell has great integrity, any of his findings will be clouded with suspicion. Already I've heard brain-dead-radio-personality-Yankee-fan, JT the Brick, ask why David Ortiz isn't being scrutinized as much as Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi.

Another problem: George Mitchell is a chairman at Disney, who happens to own ESPN, who happened to give baseball a lot of money to broadcast games. There might be a little pressure for Mitchell to avoid giving baseball a black eye.

So I guess MLB doesn't understand the problems of conflict of interest. Who knows what they'll do next? Hire a team owner to be commissioner of the MLB? Now I'm just getting carried away.

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