I don't know if you've read George Mitchell's report to the commissioner of baseball. It's a 409 page story about closing the barn door. It even has illustrations. It is as dull as everything else Mitchell has written, but it interests me for two reasons.

First because it is about baseball, the major sport for which statistics are most significant. Not only was there breaking of federal law and baseball policy, drug abuse and corruption at a very high level, but the players' union was more concerned to protect evildoers than it cared about the integrity of the game.

Then we get this pontifical lawyer/buffoon spinning the whole thing. Watching a lawyer saying stupid things into a microphone is always interesting.

So now there will be a galaxy of asterisks to invalidate the game we all grew up with. Who knows who did what and who cares? What's the Hall of Fame anyway? Just watch the medical freaks and pretend we did what was necessary to "level the playing field".

Someone called this report a wake-up call. That's another thing that interests me: the ensuing delusion. The game has been compromised and the damage is incalculable (literally), irrevocable and irreparable. There was a time for wake-up calls at least as far back as 1991; this would have to be a wake-up call for Rip Van Winkle.

So now we don't have just taunting, strutting, trash-talking illiterates who fight in the stands with spectators, lose Olympic medals and Tours de France. Now they can reach back and eviscerate the game's past.

It's a great day for sport.

And lawyers.

It's also a great lesson for evangelicals of all sorts. Some mistakes are irrevocable. You turn a liturgy into bumper music and you do more damage than you know.