Straight from the Sports Desk: Into the Mitchell Report: Way to go, Stan

Well, that's just awesome. It turns out that former Giants head trainer Stan Conte, by all accounts a good, honest guy who is of no relation to Balco founder Victor Conte, may have inadvertently set off the entire Balco scandal, and by extension, the Mitchell Report, and by extension (hopefully), the cleansing of baseball.

I have not read the entire 409-page Mitchell Report, but fortunately, ESPN.com has dissected every inch and found some interesting things. Mark Fainaru-Wada, who was half of the S.F. Chronicle team that wrote "Game of Shadows" before landing a job at ESPN a couple of months ago, reveals some interesting stuff about what the Giants knew about Barry Bonds, Greg Anderson and potential steroids in the Clubhouse.

Let's go back to August 2002. Bonds had just broken Mark McGwire's single-season home run record the previous year, and the team was on its way to the World Series that October. According to the Mitchell Report, an unnamed Giants player approached Stan Conte, telling him that he was considering using steroids and that Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer and a daily clubhouse presence, was able to provide them.

Conte told the player not to use steroids, then went to tell General Manager Brian Sabean about Anderson's link to steroids. Sabean had the nerve to suggest that Conte confront Anderson -- to which Conte indignantly and correctly responded that that was NOT his responsibility.

According to the report, Sabean did not confront Anderson or tell team ownership. He told Mitchell's investigators that one reason he stayed silent was so that Conte would not be perceived as a snitch. But if Conte had been concerned about that, he wouldn't have gone to Sabean in the first place.

The only action Sabean took was to have Conte contact a local DEA agent, who reported back to the team that he found nothing to link Anderson to steroids. That was apparently good enough for Sabean: if the DEA finds nothing wrong, then nothing's wrong.

Let's face it, Sabean didn't have much motivation to act. His team was firing on all cylinders, led by its superstar Bonds. If not for a couple of ugly innings in Game 6, the Giants would have won the 2002 World Series. If he blows the whistle, that all goes right out the window. So he keeps his mouth shut. But in an amazing coincidence, the DEA began to investigate Balco that very month. One of its two sources was a local DEA agent. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I find poetic justice in that. When the Balco grand jury was in session, Stan Conte was one of the people called to testify. One of the Bay Area papers wrote a piece about how he did not deserve to be put through this -- like I said, he was a good guy caught in the middle of a bad situation. But today, Stan Conte stands vindicated by the Mitchell Report as the guy who tried to stand up for what was right. And though it didn't unfold the way he may have hoped, in the end, his stand led to the Balco investigation, which led to the Mitchell Report. You da man, Stan.

Straight from the Sports Desk

Observations of three people who have spent years scribbling notes and scrutinizing stats on the sidelines and in the bleachers.

Into the Mitchell Report: Way to go, Stan

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