Where Baseball Needs to Go Now

Jerome Solomon of the Houston Chronicle thinks the Mitchell Report is a "sad day" for baseball.

I disagree.

Sure, it's sad to realize that some of the biggest names in the game -- Roger Clemens, newly crowned home run king Barry Bonds and others -- have been cheating to succeed.

But this is one of those pivotal moments, a fork in the road. Major league baseball must make a real commitment to ridding itself of the cheaters, as surely as it did in the 1920s following the Black Sox Scandal.

If handled correctly, the rehabilitation ultimately will be joyful for the sport and its fans.

I'm not saying it won't be painful for a time. As it is for an individual who must deal with the withdrawal from an addiction to nicotine or alcohol or heroin, baseball must cope with its withdrawal pangs from performance-enhancing drugs.

But, as the old saying goes, no pain, no gain. And there is so much to be gained.

The release of the Mitchell Report is, as Jay Mariotti writes in the Chicago Sun-Times, "the first day of the rest of our baseball lives."

What kind of life that will be depends on how baseball's owners and players -- and fans -- react to this issue.

It's out there, no longer hidden in the shadows. Out there for all to see. Will we sweep it under the rug? Or will we learn from it?