Baseball is a summer game. It is often played in sunshine, in ball-parks where vendors throw bags of peanuts and crowds sing “Take me out to the ball game”, the vaudeville song: “Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack/I don’t care if I never get back.”

But the World Series ended in October and there was sleet in New York on Thursday as George Mitchell, former senator and Northern Ireland peace negotiator, announced the results of his inquiry into drug-taking. It was a scathing indictment of law-breaking and reliance on anabolic steroids and human growth hormone throughout Major League Baseball.