Yesterday, the New York Post‘s Kevin Kernan wrote the Baseball Hall of Fame is considering shortening the current five-year waiting period for induction to three. While Kernan doesn’t come out and suggest the move is in response to the ever-increasing number of PED-pumping superstars inching their way up the ballot, he doesn’t have to: it’s quite clear the Hall is looking for a PED distraction.

Next year, the Hall gets a reprieve: Barry Larkin, Tim Raines, and Jack Morris will headline the ballot. Larkin should’ve received the required votes this year, Raines is the pet-cause of the sabermetric community (as well he should be — there’s a compelling argument he was more valuable than Tony Gwynn), and Jack Morris is the poster boy for those writers/voters who still believe pitchers “pitch to a score” and can win games based on intangibles. At least two of those three will get in, making 2012′s Hall of Fame weekend a nice one. But once the 2012 ceremony wraps up, things are gonna get real complicated.

In 2013, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa will all find their way onto the ballot. As we speak, bloviators across the Baseball Writers Association are preparing their columns and it’s going to get ugly. Words like “integrity” and “morality” are going to be used a whole hell of a lot. In the end, we’re going to be left with maybe a one-person class (Mike Piazza) and three of the game’s greatest players sitting on the outside looking in. In the meantime, MLB says nothing. They do nothing. They continue to condemn and decry the use of PEDs in their game, yet still uphold the records of the men who maybe-kinda-sorta used a legal/illegal substance to help break them. Twenty-plus years later, MLB still has no idea what to make of these players or their accomplishments.

So, why start giving us answers now? Instead let’s leave it to the interpretation of the Hall of Fame voters, who couldn’t possibly screw this up, right? Let’s institute witch-hunts, scapegoats, assumption, and rumor as our new forms of ex-post facto drug testing. Hell, just do a Google image search of “Barry Bonds steroids” and all the answers you need about his candidacy are right there. Then, let’s throw in anyone else who wasn’t Frank Thomas and Ken Griffey, Jr. and keep them out. Who’s going to stop us? MLB? The Hall of Fame? I don’t think so.

I understand the Hall of Fame is a museum, supposedly separate from MLB — but the two organizations are hopelessly intertwined as one group provides a forum for the history of the game and the other preserves it. The Hall of Fame is already an interesting place: one of only three players with 3,000 hits and 500 home runs is about to fall off the ballot while players like Jim Rice and Andrew Dawson are enshrined. MLB, in concert with the Hall of Fame, needs to take the steps necessary to either fully reject this period of time in the game’s history or do something to legitimize it. There’s no in between.

Baseball great Barry Bonds is an asshole. Nobody denies that. But he has also hit more home runs then any player in MLB history. From 1999-2004 a Barry Bonds at-bat was the greatest thing to witness in sports. It sucks that so many ball players took the juice to shoot up their stats and make tons of money but if everybody else is ignoring the speed limit on the highway then what are you supposed to do?

If you agree with anything I just wrote, then you might be Greg Anderson. He just went back to prison. For the fourth time. Fourteen months in total. Seriously. This guy has been to prison more then Tony Yayo (best I could do).

Stick me fast and let’s go do some BP, ESPN:

Anderson repeated his long-standing refusal to testify against his childhood friend, was held in civil contempt by Illston, taken into custody by U.S. Marshals and escorted out a back door. This will be his fourth time in prison, his third for refusing to testify against Bonds, and he will likely be held until the end of the trial. The case is expected to last about a month.

Anderson also served three months in prison and three months in home confinement for money laundering and steroids distribution from the original BALCO case. Anderson’s plea in that instance happened in 2005. Bonds’ trial is the last to stem from the BALCO investigation.

Somebody is getting a christmas syringe card from the Bonds household this holiday season.

On a gorgeous Monday afternoon in St. Louis, the Houston Astros strode into Busch Stadium to take on the Cardinals in their home opener. Amidst a record crowd, Adam Wainwright sat down the Astros in a tidy 2 hours and 24 minutes. Albert Pujols homered (again) and Ryan Ludwick had four hits. Of course, against the hapless Astros, this is hardly a surprise. Nevertheless, the biggest story of the day took place before the game during introductions, when a crowd approaching 50,000 fans gave a standing ovation to former Cardinal great and current hitting coach Mark McGwire.

Writers theorized about how McGwire finally earned forgiveness for his past PED trangressions — a forgiveness undoubtedly made easier on the conscience of so many Cardinal fans who are aware of the team’s prolific 2010 offense (five runs per game). I couldn’t agree less.

I see the “message” as not being meant for McGwire at all, but rather a statement to the whining pontificators bemoaning an entire era in baseball history. The fans realize that the same blowhards that have been condemning McGwire since St. Patty’s Day 2005 were also the ones using column space to write love letters to him and Sammy Sosa in 1998 — and they are sick of it.  Fans have grieved over players like McGwire, but they’ve moved on.   For those members of the media and ex-players who are still calling for erased record books, it is time to do the same (as a side note, broadcaster and former deadbeat Jack Clark, who called McGwire a “phony,” was summarily booed by the home crowd).

Mark McGwire's record-breaking 1998 season was the epitome of late 1990's-early 2000's culture. By 2005, those days were long gone and McGwire was in exile.

Since Ken Caminiti came clean in 2002, baseball hasn’t been the same. Defense, fielding and walks are in. Homeruns are out. There aren’t a lot of guys walking around that look like McGwire, Sosa or Barry Bonds. Which all and all, is probably a good thing. You can argue that it’s more exciting to see a guy like Nick Johnson grind his way to a .400 on-base percentage rather than a 50 HR season from Brady Anderson, but either way, you’re not looking at the same product anymore. The economics of this game, hell, of this country, dictated a new type of dynamic that has broken down the long-standing beliefs that were accepted as undeniable baseball insider fact. The old tale that a veteran’s grit is worth more than an equally-talented 20 year-old earning the league minimum is an extinct ideology. The war against Sabermetrics is over, and as much as Joe Morgan hates to admit it, the old guard lost. The fact that Zach Greinke and Tim Lincecum won a combined 31 games last year and still captured their respective league’s Cy Young awards proves that the revolution is here. Think I’m wrong? Check out the last night’s box score.

So while baseball may not be better than it was in 1998 or 2001, it’s not worse. And the game has survived. Revenues are up and so is attendance. Blame Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds all you want, but nothing they ingested during their careers is going to knock the luster off of the emergence of new superstars like Evan Longoria or Justin Upton. It’s time for the writers to move on. For those who love the sport, it’s time to put the dream-like period of baseball history that has become known as the “Steroid Era” into perspective: what an incredible (yet tainted) era of baseball. There is no reason we should turn our backs on it, or the icons who made box-score watching fun again.

Speaking of box-scores: the last time St. Louis had a shutout during a home opener was 1998 when they beat the Dodgers 6-0. Guess who led the way? McGwire, who hit a grand slam.