by Kurt T. Poway

The outrage over Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire over the past five years or so always seemed to be tempered by the fact, or the assumption, as it turns out, that while the steroids era darkened the great legacy of the game of baseball, we did have some knights in shining armor that must certainly be beyond reproach. There were heroes that provided light in our darkest hours.

Of the game's great young players, some may have suspected the mashing menace Albert Pujols to be linked to steroids, but nobody was certain and seemed willing to assume he didn't. A-Rod may have been a bit of a prima donna and a head case, but at least we were virtually certain that the man who would eventually eclipse Bonds' record, if not McGwire's, was clean.

Our faith in the sport would have a shot of redemption. It may take a few years, but if he stayed healthy, while he went on his quest for 800 home runs, we could all slowly forget the fact that Barry Bonds sat atop a hallowed list that has become corrupted, not only by him, but by McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, et al.

This weekend, our best hopes - that were riding on admittedly not our favorite player - came crashing to earth, forcing all of us baseball fans to take a long, hard look into the mirror to realize that our beloved game, and the historic numbers that have made it so compelling over the past 100+ years, would never be the same. There would be no more comparing eras, wandering if players of this generation were as great as players of previous generations. Hell, they weren't even the same species, as it turns out.

Rodriguez's admission, for which he is receiving way too much praise and which came only after he was outed to Sports Illustrated, is going to force all of us to hit the re-set button.

The fact of the matter is over 100 other players were named in that report from 2003, as well, so this stretches far past A-Rod. Whether those names ever get released, and they most certainly will, the entire episode may do us a bit of cathartic good.

The innocence of days gone-by, when a player may have womanized and boozed too hard is behind us. Oh that it were that simple now. Those philandering drunks look like role models compared to what has been passing for them for the past 10+ years.

The fact of the matter is we got to a point where we could no longer honestly trust players, but like a wife who has been told time and again by friends that her husband was cheating on her, we just couldn't believe it. We, as the wife, had to actually walk in on the husband having sex with another woman in our own house to finally come to terms with the fact that we had indeed been hoping against hope. That which we love actually could betray us beyond our wildest nightmares. We never wanted to admit it could be true, because the work of rebuilding that relationship was too difficult, too daunting.

But we can't unsee what we've seen.

Baseball has changed. The sport will go on. But like the wife who accepts her husband back after his misdeeds, we will always be skeptical. The games will still be fun, the Cracker Jack crunchy and the peanuts salty, but we will always remember that the game we once loved broke our hearts. So, maybe it's time to see baseball anew. Now that all of the skeletons are falling out of the closet, maybe leave behind the baseball that hurt us and embrace this new one. We'll remember you fondly pre-steroids-era baseball. And we will always have the past, but that's all it is now - the past.