Whatever ends up coming out in the Mitchell Report on baseball and steroid use, the underlying thing is this: The lax enforcement over steroid use in Major League Baseball is, in many different forms, a direct offshoot of the bad labor/ownership relations in the 80s and 90s. One part of this is the players union's steadfast refusal, at times, to agree to more stringent testing. Another part was a tacit willingness by management and others to look the other way as the home run derby got going between McGwire and Sosa in 1998. One might suppose the reason for the latter is because baseball needed some kind of event to bring some of the fans back after the 1994 strike debacle. There was no man behind the curtain in all of this, many are to blame, including, perhaps, ourselves. But I've long felt you can't put an asterisk on Bonds alone, because there were, common sense would dictate, plenty of pitchers using the stuff as well. I'm guessing when a bit of time passes, that this period WILL be looked upon as the "juiced" era in the same way we look at the "dead ball" era now.