Mitchell and me

Think of me as the 38-year-old farm hand who gets called up from Triple A to make a spot start in an important game. I kept my team in the game for six strong innings and turned it over to others win the game. That's what I tell myself anyway.

I got drafted by the general news operation of the VERYLARGEMEDIAORGANIZATION at which I work to help out the "sports desk," such as it is (one guy Larry, Yankees fan), with the Mitchell Report. You won't find my by-line on any of the coverage, unfortunately. But I'd like to think I made my mark on the coverage in important ways that sort of highlight how our journalists operate.

Larry is a baseball nut, with whom I've bonded over Roto (or fantasy baseball). During the season, we can't walk past one another without a 5-10 minute update on how our teams are doing in our respective leagues. So when he was looking for backup coverage on the 409-page report on steroid use in baseball, he was kind enough to think of me.

What served me well in this endeavour was not my ability to recognize the merits of Todd Hundley or David Bell, but instead the eight-plus years I spent writing headlines for financial news -- reading 500-page government documents and boiling down what people need to know in one paragraph or less.

What we do, to mix my metaphors, is meatball surgery. While Larry was at the press conference jousting with George Mitchell, I sifted through 400 pages found the first four headlines you were likely to see on the actual report and I wrote the first story (two paragraphs long -- and sadly lost in a sea of zeros and ones and replaced on our site by the final version of the story -- such is the life of a wire service reporter) on the report. I followed this up with a list of the salient points of the document. Mike, a Mets fan who writes about oil companies for a living, adeptly turned the documentation of Roger Clemens and others' drug use into a compelling sidebar. Gary, a Crimson Hose fan who edits copy on treasury bonds, compiled a paragraph on each of the players in the report. General news reporter Dan (Padres) and drugs reporter Lewis (don't know who he roots for) called everyone they knew for reaction. The bureau chief Mark, an Irishman who knows as much about baseball as I know about cricket, took all of our efforts and distilled it into a cohesive "write through" in 300 words, within 22 minutes of the report becoming public.

I put out some more headlines on Bud Selig's reaction and issued another two paragraphs, which were then fed into Larry's main story. And then I spent the last hour of the night compiling a list of baseball scandals. Not a complete list by any means. A list that excludes the reserve clause and its implications and the Gentleman's Agreement, which to my mind is possibly the greatest shame in the history of the sport, is a list you could drive a Hummer through. But after debating with editors for all of 45 seconds, I was told to shut up and write.

By no means is this glamorous work. We didn't save any lives. We didn't bring down the Bush Administration. We didn't necessarily tell the story better than anyone else (I haven't looked at much of the competition but ESPN's web site did an excellent job packaging their coverage. Baseball Prospectus has some of the greatest thinkers in game, but speed is not their forte. In fact, looking at the site, you'd never know there was news last night).

But it was the first time in a long time that I felt like I was part of something great. It made me feel proud of where I work and lucky to work with the people I do.