CREDIT: Stan Honda, AFP/Getty Images HARDBALL: Special investigator and former U.S. senator George Mitchell pointed the finger at all of Major League Baseball Thursday as he released his report on doping.

TORONTO - George Mitchell's report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball named some of the game's biggest names, pointed fingers in every direction, and tacitly suggested the substance scandal is too widespread to ever be fully known.

The Mitchell Report, released Thursday in New York, implicated seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens and his teammate Andy Pettitte, seven-time MVP Barry Bonds and Canadian Cy Young winner Eric Gagne.

It also named 80 other current and former major-league players.

Toronto Blue Jays catcher Gregg Zaun and third baseman Troy Glaus were also implicated in the 409-page paper.

More than 20 months in the making, the report relied heavily on evidence from former New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski and Brian McNamee, a former strength coach with the Blue Jays and New York Yankees.

"I reported what I learned but I acknowledge, and even emphasize the obvious, there is much about performance-enhancing substances in baseball that I did not learn," said Mitchell, who got almost no co-operation from players or the Major League Baseball Players' Association.

"There have been other suppliers and other users past and present. Radomski himself said that some players told him they had other sources and the evidence is clear that many players obtained such substances through so-called rejuvenation centres using prescriptions of doubtful validity."

Mitchell refrained from saying how much blame baseball, member teams, players and club employees held. With players from all 30 teams caught up in the report, the blame could be spread around, he said.

"The players who illegally used performance-enhancing substances are responsible for their actions, but they did not act in a vacuum," he said.

"Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades -- commissioners, club officials, the Players' Association, the players -- shares in the responsibility for the steroid era. There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on."

Citing a need to move forward, the length of time elapsed since the alleged use, baseball's new drug-testing protocols and his inability to identify all users, Mitchell urged Selig to, in most cases, not enforce discipline based on his report.

SELIG MAY ACT

But Selig, who held a separate news conference after Mitchell finished his presentation, said he would reserve judgment on the issue of sanctions.

"The fact that players are named and have done what they did, they're going to have to live with that," said Selig.

"What I've said is that I'm going to review his findings and the factual support for those findings and punishment will then be determined on a case-by-case basis. I will take action when I believe it is appropriate, particularly when I believe it affects the integrity of this sport."

Though both baseball owners and the MLBPA resisted the investigation, Selig said he was glad to have ordered it, though he admitted being upset about the lack of co-operation from baseball's union.

"I didn't want somebody to say one day, 'What were they hiding, they wouldn't even examine their past. Why?'" said Selig.

In his own news conference, Fehr said Selig's decision to unilaterally begin an investigation forced the union to advise its members that anything they said to Mitchell could be used against them in future criminal proceedings.

However, Fehr, often accused of dragging his feet on drug testing and still cited as one of the factors frustrating efforts to test for HGH, agreed the MLBPA might have delayed meaningful sanctions from the time drugs popped up as an issue in the late 1980s until random testing entered baseball's CBA in 2002.

"Perhaps we and the owners could have taken the steps sooner," he said. "And on my part, in hindsight, that seems obvious."

Clemens and Pettitte, two of the highest-profile players named in the report, both released statements through their shared agent, Randy Hendricks.

While Pettitte's statement merely said he would comment in the future, Hendricks' e-mail of a letter from Clemens' attorney Rusty Hardin said the pitcher "vehemently denies" first-hand allegations from McNamee in the Mitchell Report that the one-time strength coach personally injected Clemens with steroids.

"Roger has been repeatedly tested for these substances and he has never tested positive. There has never been one shred of tangible evidence that he ever used these substances and yet he is being slandered today," Hardin said.

"The use of steroids in sports is a serious problem, it is wrong and it should be stopped.

"However, I am extremely upset that Roger's name was in this report based on the allegations of a troubled and unreliable witness who only came up with names after being threatened with possible prison time."