Mike Celizic

The toothpaste is out of the tube, Bud. You can’t put it back in.

Yet that’s what Bud Selig said he is thinking of doing, USA Today reported. He said he’s mulling the idea of declaring Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs to be a higher total than Barry Bonds’ 762. The baseball commissioner would pull off this mathematical miracle by affixing the dreaded asterisk to the BALCO Bomber’s total. He would presumably also demote all single-season home run records so that Roger Maris’ 61 could re-assume its position atop the record list.

The impulse is understandable. Selig is paid $18 million a year to love baseball, and he does it well, if not always wisely. He does have a passion for the game and deeply cherishes its traditions and mythology.

But as much as he believes that folks such as Bonds and Alex Rodriguez and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa sullied the supposed purity of the game, he can’t change what’s happened. Players might lie, but numbers don’t. Selig can plaster the record books with asterisks, and 762 will still be a larger number than 755. Any attempt to pretend it’s not will only draw even more attention to baseball’s shame.

There’s no telling what other records would have to be annotated if Selig goes through with this. One envisions a record book full of footnotes and asterisks, with new ones employed every time some helpful anonymous source reveals the name of another steroid user.

At least he recognizes that. “Once you start tinkering, you can create more problems," Selig said, USA Today reported. “But I'm not dismissing it. I'm concerned. I'd like to get some more evidence."

Selig is quite happy having other cheaters’ records stay just where they are. Pitchers who threw spitters and scuff balls will not have footnotes attached to their win totals. Hitters who took amphetamines to perk themselves up for games will not have to explain their use of illegal drugs.

It’s just users of steroids, human growth hormone and other "banned substances" who are being called on the carpet. All other cheaters and drug users get off free. And because we don’t know which players used drugs and for how long they used them, those unlucky enough to be outed will suffer while everybody else skates.

Think about A-Rod. Until Sports Illustrated reported he tested positive in supposedly anonymous tests baseball conducted in 2003, most fans probably thought he was a player who probably didn’t juice. Rodriguez didn’t have bulging muscles like Bonds and Sosa and McGwire. He had incredible natural talent. And he said he was clean.

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If the players' association had allowed those 2003 test results to be destroyed, A-Rod would still be a clean man in the eyes of the public. But now he’s tarred for life. Lucky for Selig somebody else will be commissioner when A-Rod retires, because it’s not going to be easy trying to come up with a fudge factor for the three years Rodriguez admits being on the juice.

But there are 103 other players who tested positive in those 2003 tests. That’s a lot of players, and when you consider they knew the tests were coming, you have to assume that there were at least as many others who stopped their cycles so they wouldn’t test positive.

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Nobody knows or ever will know how many players used steroids during the 1990s, when baseball was so delighted with all the records being set it didn’t bother to ask how the players had suddenly gotten so big and powerful. It could have been half of all players or more. We know of only a few with something approaching certainty. But there are no positive tests. There are no tests at all for most of them.

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