Major League Baseball has a problem. Yes, steroids and other “performance enhancing drugs” is the problem everyone wants to talk about, but in my opinion, the real problem is history. I’m not talking about the last 100+ years of baseball history. I’m talking about the history that’s been created by Barry Bonds over the last decade.

You see, Baseball can fix the steroid problem. They can implement strict testing policies, throw some people out of the game and put some people in jail. In time, that problem can be controlled. But what is baseball going to do about the statistics? Namely, Barry Bonds’ statistics?

Now, as far as we know, Barry is innocent. He’s said he never knowingly took steroids. Some believe him and some do not. Personally, I think Barry is a liar. Look at the metamorphisis his body has gone through from the Pittsburg and early San Francisco days to today. It’s not right. His head size has almost doubled it seems. Generally your head doesn’t grow unless you’ve been putting stuff in your body that makes it grow. Anyway, the point is Barry is innocent right now.

Now back to the problem. Some solutions I’ve heard involve putting asterisks next to his records. That’s a Pandora’s Box that no one wants to open. So let’s say Barry ends up breaking Hank Aaron’s career homerun mark and then is found to have taken steroids. We go back through the record books and put the asterisks next to his single season record, career record and essentially every other homerun he hit.

Now not only do we have a nice fat asterisk at the top of Baseball’s most precious statistic, but he hit all of those homeruns off of some pitchers, right? If we’re going to say that Barry hit these homeruns with some assistance, shouldn’t we also be saying that these pitchers were cheated? Last time I checked, a homerun was an earned run. So not only would the career homeruns surrendered statistic need an asterisk, but also the ERA statistic. So should we recalculate ERAs so the pitchers are given their due credit in the history books? Not sure if a recalculation would be that much of a difference, but I think you get my point.

Someone is going to have to make a tough decision at some point to set the record straight. Hopefully Barry will remain innocent. Until then, I think it’s best for Baseball and Barry Bonds that he retires sooner than later. If Baseball decides to do anything with the statistics, I think consideration must be given to the trickle effect. It’s not fair that we only flag the person that cheated. We must also flag the person that was cheated. And we’ll need a bunch of asterisks to do that.