The time has come to make a historical call on baseball's "steroids era."

Alex Rodriguez admitted to using performing-enhancing drugs and Miguel Tejada pleaded guilty to lying before Congress on the same subject. Trials are fast approaching for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

The Mitchell Report, combined with random testing from 2003 that 104 players allegedly failed, should be enough to bring baseball's steroids issue into focus.

The stuff was all over the place — and still might be.

Optimistic people believe baseball is well on its way to cleaning itself up and that steroids will soon be a thing of the past.

Realistic people recognize that the sporting public will never be sure just how "clean" the game is. With each drug test, someone out there is looking for a way to beat the system.

Some drugs are detectable. Others are not.

So who really knows?

At some point, baseball historians and Hall of Fame voters have to determine what to do with players suspected of, and/or found guilty of using some type of performance-enhancing drug.

Permanent exclusion from Hall of Fame consideration? An asterisk next to their statistics? Refusal to acknowledge any record-breaking performances?

If you're answering yes to those questions, then you're saying baseball hasn't existed in the past 15 years or so and its future existence must be questioned.

You would agree with the idea of stripping Bonds and Clemens of their MVPand Cy Young Awards, and ruling any team that won a World Series with a player or players on the juice should have to forfeit their titles.

Those players cheated, right?

Stand on your soapbox and preach all you like, folks, but Barry Bonds belongs in the Hall of Fame. So does Roger Clemens and so will Alex Rodriguez. It's kinda tough denying Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa a spot in Cooperstown, too.

Great players are great players, period.

Not every guy who took steroids in baseball — not even close — elevated himself to stardom.

Yes, steroids are bad. But they are a part of progress in sports and progress isn't always good.

If steroids were as readily available and prevalent in the 1960s as they are today, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle might have used them.

We'll never know.

Steroids might help a player. They don't make a player.

We live in a free society and you can choose whether to be a fan of baseball, football or any other pro sport. But steroids will be forever linked to our sporting culture, like it or not.

If that turns you away from the game, so be it.

To try to deny the accomplishments of the great players of the game today because they used modern drugs of today to enhance their bodies is denying history.

Steroids are bad. Steroids are wrong. But steroids are here.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle.