What will Mitchell do with these names?

All of baseball has to be wondering whether this adds teeth to his investigation

Jim Baumbach

12:08 PM EDT, August 22, 2007

You better believe there are several major leaguers waking up Wednesday wondering (a) if Kirk Radomski mentioned his name to George Mitchell and (b) what exactly is Mitchell going to do with this information?

What's especially interesting about the news that Radomski gave names of steroid users to Mitchell, as reported Tuesday night on SI.com, is that Mitchell has been saying that he has been nearing the end of his investigation.

Shouldn't this be just the beginning?

Let's for a second put aside the obvious conflicts of interest with Mitchell, the Red Sox, Bud Selig and Major League Baseball and pretend this is a real investigation. Up until now Jason Giambi has been the only active major leaguer who has spoken with the former senator, and his reps have made it clear he spoke only about his steroid past, not anyone else's. Given this new information of players who purchased steroids from Radomski, shouldn't this open a totally new road for Mitchell?

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Maybe it has. Mitchell's meeting with Radomski, according to the report, took place several weeks ago, before the Giambi meeting. But if Mitchell met with other current major-leaguers, surely we would have heard about it. Remember when Gary Sheffield said in spring training that the Players Association told players they didn't have to cooperate? It's no surprise that no active player beside Giambi, whose hands were tied, has met with Mitchell.

Besides, the day Selig announced that he wasn't going to penalize Giambi for his tacit admission of steroid use to USA Today, he said Mitchell wasn't expected to meet with any more active players.

Jose Canseco has said he met with Mitchell, but what could have come from that? Are we really to believe Canseco has anything left to say about steroid use in baseball after writing his book, which proved to be the turning point in this whole mess? If Canseco was willing to burn so many of his former teammates by writing what he did, much of which proved to be true, then I find it hard to believe he held anything back. So it's probably safe to assume he gave Mitchell nothing new.

Of course Radomski is the key witness here, the guy who admitted in his plea agreement in April to selling performance-enhancing drugs to dozens of players and their associates. It's a major coup for Mitchell that the federal investigators made it a part of his plea agreement to cooperate with him. And by reportedly giving him the names of steroid users -- presumably the players who wrote checks to him in exchange for anabolic steroids, human growth hormones and amphetamines -- Mitchell has in his hands incredibly sensitive and meaningful info.

Ever since the grand-jury leaks in the BALCO case, the federal government has worked extremely hard to ensure the privacy of other names they've acquired. It's still unclear whether the names that got out from the Jason Grimsley report were accurate, and the names of players connected with Radomski (past and present) have remained a mystery, blacked-out on their filing.

Two newspaper groups even argued in court that the Radomski names should be made public if they are given to Mitchell, whose investigation is independent of the feds. But the federal investigators made it clear they are handing over nothing but Radomski, and therefore it was his decision to give up the names.

Mitchell has said repeatedly of late that the investigation is in the "final stages," and his report should be delivered in a matter of months. Clearly, he now has some valuable information. Wednesday, everyone associated with Major League Baseball has to be wondering what he'll do with it.