I hope to discuss the “Steroid Era” and how to handle it in greater detail in the future, but I had some quick thoughts on the Bonds situation in light of the alleged positive steroid tests that were recently unsealed in Bonds’s perjury trial.

I was listening to “Mike and Mike” on ESPN Radio on the way to work this morning and they were discussing Bonds’s alleged positive tests. Mike Greenberg was arguing that if it is proven in a court of law that Bonds used steroids, then there should definitely be an asterisk attached to his career numbers or that his stats should be deleted entirely from the record books. Mike Golic disagreed, under the theory that you don’t know where to stop in terms of who used steroids and who didn’t (due to evidence and proof issues), so you won’t know whose statistics to delete. I think there is merit to this argument, but I remember hearing a much more compelling one a couple of years ago. It went something like this:

Basically, baseball is a zero sum game. For example, every time a batter hits a homerun, a pitcher gives up that run. The batter’s hits, runs, RBI, HR, AVG, SLG, OBP, etc. go up, while the pitcher’s runs allowed, hits allowed, WHIP, ERA (if earned), etc. go up. While I’m sure MLB’s record books aren’t completely balanced due to poor recordkeeping in the early days, the books have likely been balanced to the greatest extent possible for the past several decades. That’s why you can’t just delete a player’s stats from the record books.

Let’s say that it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt (I guess that would be the standard, since taking steroids is illegal) that Bonds took steroids from 2000 until the end of his career. If you were to delete all of Bonds’s statistics from that point forward, you would also have to readjust all of the other collateral stats. Every pitcher who gave up a home run to Bonds during that stretch would need to have their ERAs adjusted, among many other things. And what about all of the Giants wins that Bonds contributed to over that period? If the Giants were down 8-7 in the bottom of the ninth inning of a particular game against the Padres and Bonds hit a two-run walk-off home run and that home run is subsequently deleted, do the Padres now win that game? It’s ridiculous and, as a result, this sort of revisionist history should not be considered.

Baseball isn’t track and field. In the 100 meter, for example, everyone gets an individual time. If it turns out that the gold medalist was using steroids, you can delete that individual’s time and give the medal to the second place finisher. I’m sure some issues could arise in longer races where runners are drafting off one another or pacing themselves against other runners, but deleting a cheater’s performance is a much easier task and doesn’t muddy the waters like it would in MLB.

What’s done is done, the horse is out of the barn, you can’t unring the bell – you pick the cliche. People are just going to have to deal with the fact that the “Steroid Era” happened and is just a part of MLB history now. No asterisks or deletions necessary.