Baseball is always touting its tradition and ties to the past, how the chance to compare the pitchers and hitters from different eras links one generation of fans to the next. But as the ambivalence over Barry Bonds’ home-run trots make increasingly clear, most of us regard that century-old tie to the past as hanging now by a few slender threads. If the Mitchell commission collects enough evidence to provide some context, we can make our own decisions on whether it’s worth mending.

The problem right now is that Giambi is the only ballplayer who’s been compelled to unburden himself. By taking any further punishment off the table, Selig might be able to coax other players to do the same. It’s the only reason to give Mitchell more time to complete a thankless job.

Skeptics never expected that the former senator’s investigation would amount to much. Selig has ordered club executives and general managers and perhaps even a few owners to talk to Mitchell, but the guess here is that most of them said they had plenty of suspicions, but no proof. If that’s all that Mitchell concludes, then Selig, too, can plausibly deny that he knew there was a problem, let alone a supersized one.

What we do know is that during this era, everybody in the game was focused on squeezing every last dollar out of the game. The long ball was like a gift from heaven after the disenchantment sown by the strike and canceled 1994 season. Ballplayers, front-office people and owners did everything within the rules to keep them flying into the seats.

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Most of the new ballparks that were built since then had short home-run porches and several owners sought, and received, exemptions from Selig to make them shorter still. The salary scale for middle-infielders who hit home runs was as bulked-up as the players themselves.

Here’s hoping that Giambi wasn’t the only one who took something out of those oversized pay envelopes and gave it to a charity or two. Or that he’s the only one willing to sit down with Mitchell and spill the beans about some of what he knows.

It hardly seems like too much to ask, especially now that the commissioner is in such a charitable mood