America At Large:The unmasking of Cleveland pitcher Paul Byrd as a drug cheat would appear to be another feel-good story gone bad, but its timing could have been better - for Byrd, for the Indians, for Major League Baseball, and for George Mitchell.

Byrd is a Bible-quoting journeyman who battled his way back through at least two career-threatening arm surgeries to win, at the age of 36 and with his sixth major league team, 15 games this past season.

That earned him a spot as the fourth starter in both rounds of the Indians' play-off series.

On October 8th, Byrd beat the Yankees 6-4 to clinch a spot in the Championship Series against the Red Sox, and on the night of October 16th, he defeated Boston 7-3 to give the Indians a commanding, 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series for the American League pennant.

Byrd did not pitch again, nor did the Indians win another game, but last Saturday the news broke that between 2002 and 2005 the pitcher had purchased nearly $25,000 worth of human growth hormone (HGH) via the internet from a Florida "anti-aging clinic" implicated in supplying drugs to numerous athletes.

Records indicated that during the period in question Byrd had taken delivery of 13 separate shipments of HGH, along with hundreds of syringes. The drugs had been "authorised" with a prescription written by a Florida dentist whose licence was suspended (for "fraud and incompetence") in 2003, and were shipped to the pitcher's Georgia home, to his former team's spring training headquarters in Florida and to a team hotel in New York. Apparently Byrd even brazenly stored some of the contraband drugs in a refrigerator in the team clubhouse.

Although Byrd was not scheduled to pitch again in the ALCS, the maelstrom created by the news was hardly helpful to the Indians, who found themselves fending off more questions about HGH than about the Red Sox.

Next thing anybody knew, the Tribe had dropped three straight, rendering moot any question about whether Byrd would be allowed to pitch in the World Series that got under way at Fenway Park last night.

While l'affaire Byrd undoubtedly proved a distraction to the Cleveland players and management, the timing of the bombshell report also served to place Mitchell squarely in the crosshairs of the media debate. Indians fans, as well as several newspapers around the country (including the New York Times), suggested that the man heading up Major League Baseball's in-house probe into performance-enhancing drugs also had a vested interest in the fortunes of the Boston Red Sox, and that he might have had a hand in leaking word of Byrd's past transgressions at what, from a Cleveland perspective, could not have come at a more inappropriate time.

Mitchell, the former US Senator who gained worldwide respect as the chairman of the Northern Ireland peace accords, was given a brief in April 2006 to head up the probe into baseball and performance-enhancing drugs. His committee's report is scheduled to be released in the coming weeks, but since the investigation has been repeatedly stonewalled by a lack of cooperation from the players' association over privacy issues, it is expected to be less damning than it probably should have been.

Here's the problem: Mitchell also sits on the board of directors of the Red Sox. While he does not, as some have erroneously suggested, own stock in the team, the terms of his arrangement with the Boston club would give him an equity position in the (extremely unlikely) event the Red Sox were sold. Sceptics seized upon this apparent conflict of interest to lay the timing of the news about Byrd squarely at his feet.

Mitchell was forced to issue a statement insisting: "Neither I nor any member of my investigative staff had anything whatsoever to do with the publication of the allegations about Mr Byrd. We had no prior knowledge of those allegations, and we first learned of them, along with the rest of the public, through news accounts. Any information obtained in my investigation will not be made public until the report is released in the near future."

We believe him on this count. Not only is Mitchell a man of unquestioned integrity, but last weekend's news about Byrd was unearthed by Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada of the San Francisco Chronicle. The authors of Game of Shadows didn't need any help from George Mitchell. If anything, their investigative resources are probably better than his.

Although HGH has been included on the list of baseball's banned substances since January 2005, it cannot be detected by urinalysis, which is the only testing procedure allowed under the agreement between MLB and the players' union.

Byrd, in a hastily-convened press conference beneath Fenway Park in Boston last weekend, acknowledged having purchased the drugs in question, but maintained that they were obtained and used under medical supervision.

"I have not taken any hormone apart from under a doctor's care and supervision," said Byrd on the eve of his team's elimination. "The Indians, my coaches and MLB have known that I have had a pituitary gland issue for some time and have assisted me in getting blood tests in different states."

His statement seemed to acknowledge that he was still using HGH.

"That's a private matter, but I still have a pituitary issue," he maintained. "But I haven't tried to do anything behind anyone's back."

But Byrd also seemed to acknowledge that what he described as a "pituitary tumour" was of comparatively recent vintage. Such pituitary abnormalities are a known by-product of protracted HGH use.