Before I get started, I want to let readers know that I have a few days off coming, so I likely will not post again after today until this weekend, around the time the Ravens play in Miami. I'll bring the laptop to the beach. (Maybe.)

Anyway ... as much as I'd love to tear off another piece of the Michael Vick story, and slap him around for all the things he did to get himself such a long sentence and for his bizarre definition of "accepting responsibility'' ... and wonder aloud what Ravens fans would say if the team was in the same dire straits at quarterback in 2010 and Vick came out of jail and became available ... and ask whether people really do care more about dogs getting killed than people getting killed (comparing the continued round-the-clock debate about Vick to the total abandonment, just two weeks later, of the Sean Taylor story) ...

... I'd rather pore over David Segui's comments in this morning's Sun and how it bodes poorly for the Mitchell report.

Think about this: Segui has been out of baseball for three years, and clearly he still maintains the clubhouse loyalty from his playing days. He said in the article that he didn't speak to the Mitchell people at all, not about himself and not about any of his fellow players. Or even about Jason Grimsley or Kirk Radomski, even though he talked about both of them to this paper in the past year-plus.

We already knew that the Mitchell people were having a hard time getting current players to cooperate. The group had no subpoena power, the union was advising everybody not to talk, and players in general didn't have to be reminded not to snitch. (Yes, there's a Stop Snitching policy in places other than West Baltimore.) Unless you were like Jason Giambi and were given immunity in exchange for talking, you had to figure Mitchell was left milking ex-players for info. In fact, some of their leaked info two summers ago involved ex-players.

Now, Segui's comments make you wonder what other ex-players turned Mitchell down. Who else said, in essence, I have nothing to hide, but I'm not going to rat out the guys I shared the life with. He wouldn't even turn on Radomski; in the story, he more or less defended him, making him out to be just a guy hustling a little in the clubhouse to make an extra buck. Never mind that it's the same rationale the mobsters used in Goodfellas and what Denzel used in American Gangster.

In fact, the entire tone of Segui's comments is, "Hey, I did it, so sue me.''

All of which raises the question: After all this buildup, and the anticipation growing with the speculation that the report will come out this week, is it even going to be worth the paper it's printed on? Not only won't it move the issue forward, it won't even move it backward. Maybe I've been naive all along, or just a garden-variety sucker, or someone only hearing what I want to hear, but I'm no longer buying the propaganda about the "big names'' in the report. Segui really soured me on that prospect.

I've lost a lot of faith in the idea that this report will solve anything, fix anything, even embarrass anyone into making major change, or convince anyone that baseball has this under control. All it's going to do it start a raging cycle of debates, commentaries, reactions and vacant speculation that can't be substantiated, just like with every other sports story lately (see Vick, above). Not a thing will be resolved. Probably, when it's all wrung out, we'll just be back to blaming everything on Barry Bonds.

Of course, it's my own fault for having any faith in it in the first place.

Have a great week, and I'll check in again this weekend. (Unless something really crazy happens in the meantime.)