Black day? Hardly: Baseball purging black decade

A black day for baseball?

Please.

It's been a black decade for baseball, what with having to step over syringes on the way to the ballfields, walk out of your way around vats of Human Growth Hormone and avoid tripping over FedEx boxes packed with steroids.

Bud Selig is doing what's right and taking baseball out of the shadows. (Getty Images)

Thursday was not a black day for baseball. Thursday might not have been all peanuts and Cracker Jack, but it was a welcome day, the day the game finally stepped out of the back alley of denial and into the public square of responsibility.

The drug tests implemented in 2002 and strengthened in 2005 represented progress. But what was missing was any culpability from baseball of past action -- or, rather, inaction.

Thursday, overdue and ashen-looking, we got it. And it's about time.

About time that baseball publicly and formally acknowledged that, well, gee, turns out its players haven't been bulking up to Popeye-sized proportions based solely on cans of spinach and hunks of red meat.

About time the game stepped out of its shadows and took responsibility for breaking its trust with fans. For remaining willfully ignorant for far too long.

For reprehensively allowing all of those utility infielders, extra outfielders and puny pitchers who tried to do things the right way by remaining clean over the past 10-15 years to wither on the vine and get squeezed out of the game by those who were juicing by squeezing the syringe.

Former Sen. George Mitchell's report was direct, impressive and, yes, needed. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. In its impressive, late-innings comeback, moving from lawlessness to negotiating testing with the players union in mid-Basic Agreement, baseball completely skipped that first step.

Congratulate the game for instituting a more stringent testing policy than any other major professional sport, but condemn it for first allowing the muscleheads to trash the record books while looking the other way. This morning's box score: Players connected to steroids or HGH in the Mitchell Report combined for 113 All-Star appearances, 13 Most Valuable Player awards, eight Cy Youngs and four Rookie of the Year awards.

The value in the Mitchell Report, which contained 86 names either connected to steroids use or possession, alleged Internet purchasing or the BALCO investigation, is that it pulls back the shades, cutting through years of denials -- from commissioner Bud Selig, owners and players -- and attempts to place into historical context an era in a game that treasures its history like no other.

The danger in the Mitchell Report is in assuming that its wide-ranging scope is anything close to comprehensive and definitive.