The Boston Globe has J.P.'s cell number

And Richard Griffin is, like, soooooo jealous. Eat your heart out, Dick.

J.P. spoke here to the Boston Globe's Nick Cafardo (scroll down) on Mitchell, Eckstein, Johnny Mac and A.J.. For those of you too lazy to click on a link, we've summarized below.

J.P. on Zaun and Glaus' status post-Mitchell Report: "We expect they'll be playing for us...I'm sure it's as tough on them not knowing."

J.P. on signing Eckstein: "He's a gritty guy, a high-chemistry guy who we think will fit onto our team quite well...If it works out, we'll hope to keep him around."

J.P. on Johnny Mac: "John is still very much in our plans."

J.P. on the likelihood that he'll move A.J.: "Not really discussing anything like that."

Mitchell Report: It's all Toller Cranston's fault

Remember when Toller Cranston was on Off The Record with Roger Clemens shortly after he came to the Jays, and the figure skater asked him why baseball players were so fat?

And then around the same time, the Rocket starts getting testosterone shots in the ass at the SkyDome Hotel from Brian McNamee.

Coincidence?

Mitchell, Infinite Redux - Butter chimes in

Cheers to newly elevated Blue Jays bench coach Brian Butterfield for laying it all out when talking to the Bangor News on the Mitchell Report.

"It’s old news. The whole problem has been in baseball for a long time. Baseball let it happen in the 1990s. It was right in front of them. You had guys who would hit single-digit home runs one year turn around and hit 30-40-50 home runs the next year. Now they’re strong-arming it. Let’s move on."

Amen to that, Butter.

Mitchell Redux: Join us...

...as we head over to the punch bowl, and ladle out a tasty cup of Who Gives a Fuck.

In essence, the Mitchell Report boils down to the squealings of one scumbag batboy who got caught out. Without the testimony of Mr. Radomski and his immaculately maintained shoebox of receipts and personal cheques, Mitchell's weighty tome would amount to sweet FA.

Take Zaunie, for instance. Sure, there's his cheque for $500 (which is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands that other ballplayers seemed to be shelling out.) But the corroboration of the evidence is a conversation that Tony Muser remembers having with Zaun six years ago, where he seemed to be defensive. Whoop-dee-freaking-doo.

Zaun now gets to spend the rest of his career known as a juicer, even if it is with evidence that wouldn't stand up in court. Same with Troy Glaus.

To list off the few dozen players on whom they had these small strands of evidence is ridiculous. It inflates the sins of a few, and exonerates the great multitude who managed not to get their names smeared.

And really, how many ways do we want to split this hair? Would we want to go back and see how many MLBers were using creatine, or protein powders, or ephedra, or andro? Or greenies?

All that the Mitchell Report has done is heap scorn on former MLB Commissioners (the Peter Uberroth section seems particularly egregious to us) and the Players' Association while letting the current administration get off scott free. Bullshit.

Moreover, the Report hasn't put this "problem" to bed so much as it has opened the door for further inspection, as though legislators don't have better things to do than stick their nose into the private affairs of adults who may have made unhealthy choices to advance their careers.

For that matter, we wouldn't encourage all the little kiddies to follow our lead and ingest the vast quantities of caffeine and nicotine that we have just to help us improve our writing efficiency this morning. You hear that kids?

Meanwhile, Rodney Harrison and Shawn Merriman will play to packed houses and applause this weekend.

This whole thing is such a crock of shit.

Fifty-eight minutes until the Mitchell Report is released

And then we can put all of this ugliness behind us and move on.

Right?

Update, 2:25 pm: Page 179 of the report. Say it ain't so, Zaunie. Say it ain't so.

Another Update, 2:40 pm: We totally missed this article in yesterday's National Post. (Actually, we've missed pretty every article of every National Post for about four years, but that's neither here nor there.)

In the article, Gregg Zaun takes flagrant potshots at the Mitchell Report and Bud Selig, culminating in this:

"I don't know what the report says, but if there's not hard evidence like a failed drug test or somebody got caught purchasing drugs or anything like that, it seems like they're opening themselves up to a whole lot of negative press for really no reason at all. It baffles me. It really does."

Well, it's certainly opened up Zaun for some negative press. And while we love Zaun for his candour and we're probably going to forgive him anyways, we think it was pretty weak for him to come out blasting the report beforehand without being the slightest bit open or sincere about the fact that he had been asked to testify, and with some good reason.

Allegedly.

Yet another Update, 2:51: Also, Howie Clark. For shame.