About three hours before the official Mitchell Report came out on Thursday, New York’s WNBC-TV posted an “exclusive” list of 75 players expected to appear in the official report.
That list was way off base.
Forty-one of the players named by WNBC were not mentioned in the Mitchell report, including big-name stars like Albert Pujols, Jason Varitek, Nomar Garciaparra, Mets catcher Ramon Castro and Yankees slugger Johnny Damon.
Damon discovered that he was on the NBC list when he heard from his family.
“I woke up and my brother is telling me there are reporters at my father’s house,” Damon told The Post. “My dad told them, ‘My son isn’t a liar, my son doesn’t lie.'”
The center fielder was furious, and considered suing the station.
“It sucks, I am wondering if there is any legal course to turn to,” Damon said. “I walk around with my shirt off. If I had anything to hide I wouldn’t do that. I really don’t know what to say. There seems to be some people who don’t like me…
“I asked my agent about legal action, but he said it wasn’t worth it. Maybe the president [of NBC] will write me a nice letter.”
The station updated their story about 15 minutes after it was posted, saying that a high-ranking MLB official saw “several errors” in the list.
But WNBC waited to take it down about an hour before the Mitchell Report was released. By then, there were links to the bad list on CNBC.com and The Drudge Report.
Jonathan Dienst, the reporter who posted the bad list, said he received it from two separate credible sources.
“We work very, very hard to get these stories right,” Dienst said yesterday. “We checked it and rechecked it, but what we were provided from two different places was an incorrect list, and I am very sorry for the mistake.”
St. Louis slugger Pujols released a statement yesterday in response to the bad list, saying he was “upset and disappointed” over the “reckless reporting.”
“It has caused me and my family a lot of senseless aggravation,” he said in the statement, posted on MLB.com.
“What concerns me is the affect this has had on my family and that my character and values have now been questioned due to the media’s lack of accuracy in their reporting.”