Mitchell Report is unpleasant reading

Tonight I'm beginning to digest Senator Mitchell's 400-page report on steroid use in baseball, and it's not going down too well.

Just outside my bedroom door is a cabinet full of Red Sox memorabilia I've collected over the years - I call it my Shrine. One of the displays is four baseballs I got in 1995, each highlighting a different Sox player - three of the four are named as using steroids. The report even has copies of the cancelled checks where they paid for the drugs. It's been building for a long time now, but this is a sad day for baseball. It's a sad day for me as I look at the things in my collection and wonder what they're worth - not in a financial sense but what they're worth to me. Tonight I can't remember all the times those guys made me happy - I only feel naive when I see all the warning signs in retrospect. In a way, though, each of the items represents not just the player, but also where and who I was when I acquired it - in that sense they're all still valuable. Sucks though.