Former Senator, George Mitchell, released the long-awaited report on Congress’ investigation into the impact of the use of steroids in baseball. On one hand, it was a vindication of Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds, the players who brought about a renewed interest in the game after the last strike. Steroids in baseball was not about a few “cheaters.” On the other hand, the report portrays a significant culture shift in baseball — an accepted practice — that every club in baseball accepted (or turned a blind eye to) in order to win at all costs. Mitchell’s report suggests that it’s time to clean up our national pastime, but its also time for our national pastime to come clean with the public. Players didn’t cheat just to enhance their performance. Players sought to compete, through an accepted practice, at the expense of the integrity of the game.

Caught up in the net, were some of baseball’s most revered stars. One, in particular, who represents the “holier than thou” element of baseball’s race politic, is Roger Clemens. Clemens, considered a sure hall of famer in the same way McGuire and Bonds once were, is the poster boy for sustained performance in his mid-40s. We now know why. While Clemens is denying his use, there is no way in hell that Roger Clemens shouldn’t have been in the media as a steroid user before the report came out. Yet, the media was so busy trying to bury Barry Bonds that it gave a pass to Clemens, who, according to the report, was one of the games most egregious users (Clemens’s name is the second most frequently mentioned name in the report, only second to Bonds). Some eighty players are mentioned in the report.

Most of the players used steroids before the league banned its use in 2005. Growth hormones and other performance enhancing drugs weren’t illegal in baseball because the common theory was that no matter how big you got, you still had to hit the ball. Thus, the prevailing opinion was that steroids didn’t make you play better. Those in the media only focused on hitters, as elite players sought to stay healthier and their performance numbers rose disproportionately.

What went “under the radar” were pitchers, catchers and others in “throwing positions” (shortstops, third basemen, left and center fielders) who injure themselves in the rigor of their fielding positions. It made too much sense to ask certain questions around steroids’ impact on quicker recovery times on injuries, and pitchers throwing harder and longer. The pitching angle was totally missed in the midst of 60 and 70 home runs seasons. Nobody wanted to acknowledge (as I did in a previous commentary) that these steroid hitters were hitting against steroid pitchers, who were throwing faster, just as the hitters were hitting farther. The Mitchell report demonstrates that baseball had become — not a hitter’s game or a pitcher’s game, but a cheater’s game, as players used performance enhancing drugs just to keep up.

Baseball had become just a reflection of the larger society’s desire to keep up in its quality of life, as people took on sub-prime loans to get into larger homes (or a home, period), or took on debt to finance larger deals - loans and debt they couldn’t afford and which ending up undermining the integrity of their wealth and standard of life. When the bottom fell out of the sub-prime loan market, it undermined the integrity of the economy. The same happened in baseball. Just as sub-rime loans effectively inflated the buyer’s income to enable the home purchase, so too, did steroids inflated the player’s bodies to enhance performance. Now the bottom has fallen out of the steroid saga, and its use has undermined the integrity of the game. The Steroid Era of baseball is now official.

The real question is, though, is the era over? The Mitchell report suggests that baseball end the witch-hunt (after Barry has been indicted) to end suspicion around a much larger steroid problem. We know that with any widespread social problem, not everybody gets caught. If baseball caught 80 users, then the problem is probably four times that. The performance “inflation” problem shouldn’t be exclusive to those whose records we know. They want to asterisk, or remove Barry’s and Roger’s records only because they now know. Those who weren’t caught had just as much an effect on the integrity of the game. Just as nobody’s records were affected in the segregation era and other tainted eras of the game, baseball should simply write this era off as a period when baseball failed to regulate itself and players cared more about winning than they did about the integrity of the game. One thing we know for sure, it’s no longer just about Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire. It’s now about the culture of baseball that was once accepted — but now has been rejected — over and above what we once knew as simply, “hitting the ball.”

Your comments are always welcome.