Courtesy: Sportsillustrated.cnn.com
You don't need to be a baseball fan to know that something remarkable took place at 2 p.m. today.
I mean, in all my years of watching TV - including hundreds of press conferences, breaking news events, speechs, debates and on and on and on - I do believe the Mitchell report presser deserves a special place in the pantheon of News Events. It was packed - beyond imagining - with news: Massive, stadium-shattering news, that sent a perceptible chill through an industry and hundreds of players and millions of fans. Sentence after sentence from George Mitchell was a headline. And not just any old headline, but a hundred-and-ten-point-bold-face-for-crying-out-loud-this-is-astounding-stuff headline.
And the names? Oh my God: Clemens, Pettitte, Mo Vaughn and on and on and on. The faces that MSNBC threw up on screen are more familiar than some of our own relatives. There they stood, accused of the third-most serious crime a ballplayer can be accused of (the first, throwing a game, and second, betting.)
What to say of George Mitchell: Get over the fact that he kind of looks and sounds like Bob Newhart and your realize that his performance was stunning. He's a masterful speaker who talks in iambic pentameter - without rhyming, that is. This senatorial sing-song conveys a sense that he is saying something monumental; in fact, he is, but his style adds even greater gravity.
And in all of this, a final bizarre irony: As Mitchell is laying out one of the biggest sports stories of the young century, the Iowa Democratic debate is on-going. Imagine that! Fox News - foolishly, in my opinion - stuck with the drab debate. MSNBC and many others - wisely - carried Mitchell. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of local stations - with the exception of WNYW/5 - stuck with the soaps. Oh brother. Their viewers missed some history.