After a 20-month investigation led by former Senator George Mitchell, it was revealed that 89 Major League Baseball players were allegedly using performance enhancing substances, also known as steroids.

The 311-page report hasn’t proven that the players accused are actually guilty of taking such substances, however it has finally forced MLB officials, players and clubhouse owners to deal with the problem in a proactive manner.

Mitchell is right when he says that the everyone in baseball shares responsibility for what has been called “The Steroids Era”. Fortunately, for the integrity of the game, stricter penalties have been adopted and hopefully this time they will be enforced. Suspensions have gone up from 10 games for a first offense to 50 games and a lifetime ban for a fifth positive test.

Despite everything that is being done to prevent future steroid use, nothing can be done about those who are suspected of doing so in the past. There is no possible way to determine, in a full-proof, scientific manner, that any player is guilty of using steroids in the past.

The argument is constantly made that using steroids will not improve the hand and eye coordination required to be a good baseball player. Still, the use of the steroids in MLB is a violation of the rules and illegal. So no matter how great or minimal the advantage gained through steroids is, a rule was broken.

Furthermore, the impact that this steroid controversy has on so many young, impressionable student athletes is very profound. They are now split between being honest and competitive athletes or taking a short cut that they see might have no consequences.

Should records be removed? No. Should an asterisk be added to new records? No. Simply because, if players who set new records were never proven to have taken steroids, then they are innocent of it. If they fail a test tomorrow, that doesn’t prove that what they did last year was under the influence of such substances. It might be likely, but it is not a certainty.

Steroid use has not tainted the game. The game has been tarnished by players and officials who decided to break rules that were rarely being enforced while officials turned the other way to pretend they didn’t see what was happening.

It is hard to believe that absolutely no player used steroids and that no official had probable cause to test players for such substances.

The failure of clubhouse officials and MLB officials to keep track of this issue is just as bad as the crime committed by these dishonest players who used these drugs.

Unfortunately, those responsible of dishonesty and indifference during the “Steroid Era” will soon be gone and fans will be left behind to wonder who did what.