Public, fans greet report with shrug of indifference

CHICAGO — When Cubs fan Mike O'Malley woke up Thursday, he was certain it would be the most significant day in baseball history since the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

Hours later, after the Mitchell Report had disgraced dozens of players and laid bare the national pastime's drug problem, O'Malley was no longer so sure.

Nor did he really care.

"It's so old. It's such an old story, and it's been so drawn out," O'Malley said as he watched Thursday night's NFL game between Houston and Denver at Sports Corner, a bar across the street from Wrigley Field.

"At the end of the day, I'm kind of surprised I'm this indifferent."

He's not alone. From coast to coast, in cities home to both major leagues and bar leagues, the public's reaction to the Mitchell Report was largely a shrug of indifference.

Years of BALCO, Barry Bonds and Marion Jones have left fans numb to news that yet another player took a pharmaceutical shortcut, and baseball's investigation didn't tell them anything most didn't already assume. Even the news that Roger Clemens was accused of spending part of his stellar career shooting up failed to generate much outrage.

"I really think, over the last decade, that we've been so inundated with athletes using performance-enhancing drugs that nobody is shocked by this report," said Eric Bronson, a sociology professor at Quinnipiac University who teaches "Sociology of Sport."

"You have to remember," Bronson added, "professional sports are more along the lines of entertainment than anything else right now. We're looking at sport as entertainment rather than sport as sport or competition."

Perhaps worst of all, they doubt if the report, no matter how embarrassing, will change anything.

"As long as so much money is on the line in professional sports, someone's always going to try and find a shortcut," said John Suwalski of Chicago.

It was impossible to avoid the Mitchell Report on Thursday. It was the lead story on both sports and news networks, and the report itself was downloaded 1.8 million times off MLB.com just in the first three hours after it was posted.

People were talking about it at sports bars and games throughout the country. It even caused a buzz at the women's volleyball Final Four at Arco Arena in Sacramento, Calif.

But as baseball has seen for the last decade, knowing and caring are two very different things.