Steroids era not over, just beginning

By Max J. Dickstein, amNewYork Sports Editor | mdickstein@am-ny.com

December 14, 2007

One got the impression, listening to the grave remarks of former Sen. George Mitchell and MLB Commissioner Bud Selig Thursday, that baseball would love to be able to slap a "Steroids Era" label on a vaguely defined period of ugliness and then let it be forgotten in the wintry mix.

Mitchell said "a principal goal" of his investigation was to "bring to a close this troubling chapter in baseball's history." He spoke of a "fresh start," one that Selig embraced in his own press conference later Thursday afternoon.

But the Steroids Era is more troubling than that. No matter how significant the Mitchell Report moment felt, "this troubling chapter" didn't end Thursday. We've only just begun reading it.

Neither did the Mitchell Report sink the accused performance-enhancing drug users into our collective disdain. Rather, the report's clubhouse tales adorned these alleged violators with notoriety and excited the public's salacious interest.

The crowd of former and current players tucked under the pall of accused steroid use Thursday shed new light on the wrongs of the era, but the involvement of new suspects, such as Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, increases the era's dark legend.

The transgressions -- both by players and their association and by owners and officials who were either slow or careless to react -- have a momentum that will not be pulled to a stop at the sight of the line in the sand drawn by the Mitchell Report.

"For more than a decade there has been widespread illegal use of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing substances by players in Major League Baseball," reads the report's first line.

Even if baseball owners and players are able to adopt the aggressive testing measures recommended by the report, it's safe to say that, for at least the next decade, the sport will be exorcising the lingering misdeeds of the last one.

Max J. Dickstein is amNewYork's sports editor.

E-mail him at mdickstein@am-ny.com.