Move over Barry...

From Friday's Dispatch

Barry Bonds just got some company.
Baseball’s anti-hero, accused of using performance enhancing drugs and currently in hot water on perjury charges, was just one of the dozens of players named in the long-awaited Mitchell Report Thursday.
The list covered the spectrum of baseball’s player pool. All-stars like Bonds, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Miguel Tejada top the list while lesser-known players like Chad Allen and Mike Bell find their way into infamy as well.
To me, the most striking thing to me about this is the fact that Clemens, long thought to be the best pitcher of this era, now deserves the same level of scrutiny that Bonds has received.
I hate to say I told you so, but I wrote this about Clemens in May:
“So when Roger Clemens signs the richest one-year deal — almost $155,000 a day — in baseball history this week at almost 45-years-old, why is he regarded as a marvel when Bonds is automatically labeled a cheater?”
Turns out that he wasn’t really cheating Father Time. He was just living better through chemistry.
It’s a sad day, really, for baseball. But it isn’t an unexpected one.
For me, it’s just validation that we are, and have been, living in a steroid era – a time period in which all accomplishments must be viewed through the prism of skepticsm.
Former senator George Mitchell suggests that the players named in the report not be punished for their past transgressions – and based on the lack of positive drug tests and the he-said, she-said nature of some of the testimony – it’s easy to see why he’d say that.
It’s hard to throw a blanket over these guys as the only users in this era. Surely there are some players falsely accused. Surely there are some players who aren’t named here that deserve scorn.
This report isn’t the end of the steroid-era disclosure. It’s the tip of a dirty iceberg.
But on Thursday, the asterisk discussion in regards to Bonds and his breaking of Hank Aaron’s all-time home run mark is over.
How can you single out one man when the guys hitting around him, the guys out in the field against him and the pitchers staring him down on the hill were also cheating the game?
The entire era is tainted. It’s all suspicious. I’ll never look at the game of baseball the same way again.
I still love baseball, and I’m already counting down the days until Spring Training. I’m sure not everyone will be as forgiving as I plan to be, but baseball will survive.
It has carried on through work stoppages, gambling scandals, collusion and a host of other ills in the game’s sometimes dubious history.
Questions, however, remain. Where does this leave Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, both unnamed in this report? How does this affect Clemens, Bonds, Tejada and Pettitte in terms of their future Hall of Fame chances? Will Bud Selig push for further testing, including the search for a reliable test for human growth hormone? Will he punish anyone?
It’s hard to guess where, if anywhere, this all will lead. One thing is certain. The cloud that’s been following Bonds for the last few years is suddenly a lot bigger.
And the moody slugger can now be jugded with his peers, instead of just by them.

Contact the writer at rcapps@hendersondispatch.com.