Another one bites the dust... Houghton-Mifflin announced yesterday that they will be selling their college textbook publishing division to Cengage (formerly Thomson Learning) for $750 million. This continues the trend over the past 20 years of companies buying each other in an increasingly desperate attempt to make their growth numbers. (Need to grow 5% this year? Buy somebody with 5% market share.)

We're left with fewer publishers controlling a larger chunk of the market, which means you can expect prices to continue to skyrocket. Thankfully, we as consumers do have alternatives -- buy used, buy old, or don't buy at all!

Let the feeding frenzy begin...

The Mitchell Report was released this afternoon, detailing the multi-million dollar investigation into steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) use by Major League Baseball players past and present. The damned PDF file is over 400 pages, and I've gone cross-eyed trying to read it all.

There's sort of an epidemic tracking/Typhoid Mary quality to it. You can literally follow a small handful of individuals from team to team and see the clusters of names spreading out in their wake. I'm sure the sports commentators and blogsphere will have a field day with it, there are some real gems in there.

For example, I especially love that prior to 2006

"...the Major League Baseball joint drug program did not provide for discipline based on 'non-analytic evidence' (that is, evidence of use that is not derived from sources other than a drug test.)"

That one took me a few go-rounds to even figure out what it meant. Nestled amidst the double-negative is simply this: you couldn't punish any player unless he failed a drug test. If he publicly stated he took steroids, or shot up in the middle of the stadium, or was convicted of manufacturing and selling steroids, you couldn't punish him. And since the Players Association generally seemed to hinder whatever pathetic moves the Commissioner's office made, often the drug test (if it ever happened) came so long after any suspicions that it was unlikely to show up anything.

The whole situation underlines the problem with drug abuse in sports, and in baseball particularly. I just hope people recognize that under the United States Constitution, there is a little concept called the presumption of innocence -- you know, people being innocent until proven guilty.

Sports writers, fans, and assorted media people have been jumping onto the bandwagon that has judged the players mentioned in the Mitchell Report. Plenty of examples abound, so many I won't even bother with links.

What country do we live in, again?

I seem to recall from civics class that we are innocent until proven guilty. Also, if you read the report, you'll find a house of cards built upon hearsay and the bought testimony of two guys facing jail time.

This would seem almost comical if it wasn't so damned important to the sport and to these players' lives. It's the schoolyard equivalent of "You have cooties, because Joey told me you do." No proof, just hearsay.

What country do we live in, again?

How about the architect of this report, Senator George Mitchell? He's not a US Senator these days, but he is a director of the Boston Red Sox. Hmmm... I only recall a handful of Red Sox players mentioned in the report -- two scrubbies who had already admitted to steroid use and (arguably) the biggest traitor in team history.

Is there an ethical issue here? Did Mitchell gloss over other "evidence" or fail to include names of current Red Sox players like David Ortiz (who couldn't really hit for beans until the Twins released him and he joined the Red Sox)? Could it be that Mitchell himself is caught in an ethically compromised position?

Childs Walker of the Baltimore Sun suggests he is. That's one opinion, and no further evidence, so it must be true.

Oh, and Joey says Mitchell has cooties too.