After years of denying he took performance-enhancing drugs, a tearful McGwire apologized Monday. He said he used steroids and human growth hormone on and off for a decade, starting before the 1990 season and including 1998 when he hit 70 homers to break Roger Maris’ record. MLB commissioner Bud Selig responded by saying the “so-called ‘steroid era’ … is clearly a thing of the past, and Mark’s admission today is another step in the right direction.” However, former WADA president Dick Pound criticized Selig and said he’s skeptical of claims that baseball is becoming cleaner.

“I think the jury is still out on that issue and that the self-serving statements by Bud Selig do nothing to increase confidence.” Pound said. “What has emerged in the whole baseball mess is that drug use is widespread and that even the best players are involved – and still MLB is whistling past the graveyard.

“If you notice, McGwire talks about steroids and HGH,” continued Pound. “MLB does not even test for HGH (and many other doping substances). These MLB positions are not indicators of a real attempt to solve the drug use problem in baseball.”

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency executive director Travis Tygart dismissed McGwire’s claim that steroids only allowed him to regain health and didn’t help him become a better player. “It’s just crazy – I don’t buy that for a second,” Tygart. “It’s sort of disappointing you don’t just come clean and take full responsibility.”

Fahey and former international baseball federation president Harvey Schiller praised McGwire for stepping forward. Schiller told the AP, “I always believe that a public statement by someone who was involved with performance-enhancing drugs is a good thing as a reminder to young people about how serious the implications are for your future.”

However, Fahey tempered his remarks with criticism. “Mark McGwire’s admission demonstrates some courage from an athlete who cheated his opponents and the game of baseball for years,” he said. “But let’s not forget he could have come forward and been truthful to all the kids for whom he was an idol much earlier. I would hope that he now sees his way to be a role model and clearly alert youth to the dangers of drug use and doping.”

Schiller noted that baseball’s international competitions comply with the WADA code. Fahey pointed out that Major League Baseball’s program is still not up to date, and he questioned Commissioner Bud Selig’s remark that doping in the game is now “virtually nonexistent.” Fahey concluded by stating that it “ignores the obvious reality that until any anti-doping program is independent and appropriately publicly monitored, there cannot be confidence that the program is robust and of a standard similar to all other sports.”

What a show. What a well-manicured show!

Presumably, baseball wants to encourage any player who ever juiced to come forward, confess and be forgiven.

Don’t count on it. The primary reason McGwire came forward – after perhaps 10 years of juicing as a active player, by his admission – was to ensure that his return to baseball as a hitting coach with the St. Louis Cardinals and, who knows, a viable Baseball Hall of Fame candidate, would be as seamless as possible.

McGwire set the major league single-season home run record in 1998. Now we know for sure how he did it, how he was able to play through injuries, play through pain. How he could launch towering, mammoth Ruthian home runs out of baseball parks large and small. McGwire can have his home run records and his millions. But the public should withhold the one thing he wants: validation. The Hall of Fame is out of the question.

On Monday morning, McGwire made the rounds of all the major news media outlets. He apologized for perpetrating one of the biggest shams in sports history when he broke Roger Maris’s single-season record.

Tears and cracked voices have become standard procedure in the age of apology. Show the people remorse, and they will forgive you. But you need television. Alex Rodriguez had Peter Gammons. McGwire had Bob Costas.

Finally, with a day’s worth of news media out of the way, Selig made the most incredible declaration of the day. He declared the era over as if the steroids scandal were a baseball fairy tale. The dragon was slain; now everyone could go back home, and baseball lives happily ever after.

In a statement, Selig said: “The use of steroids and amphetamines amongst today’s players has greatly subsided and is virtually nonexistent, as our testing results have shown. The so-called steroid era – a reference that is resented by the many players who played in that era and never touched the substances – is clearly a thing of the past, and Mark’s admission today is another step in the right direction.”

Over. Just like that. Goodbye, good riddance.

Not so fast, commissioner. There is no acceptable test in major league baseball for human growth hormone, hence no one has any realistic idea of who is using performance-enhancing drugs. The assumption is that players are too frightened, too intimated, to use an undetectable drug. In truth, the stakes are too high for some not to try.

So, what more than an apology do you want? What more do you want from McGwire? Not from McGwire, from baseball. We need more than tearful statements, choreographed news conferences and nationally televised interviews. Baseball needs its own extensive truth-and-reconciliation hearings. Baseball is obligated to seek the truth, the whole truth.

Don’t trot out a star here, a star there, and tell us we have the entire story. Thousands of fans feel they were robbed by McGwire, others feel they were duped, most feel they were cheated. Many fans really believed in the magic of McGwire, believed he accomplished his feat entirely through hard work and determination.

Baseball must follow the truth where it leads. The only way to understand an era is to understand its context. McGwire and others will be required to tell a panel what they would not tell Congress. For example. Who sold you the H.G.H.? Are they still in business? Who else was using?

Most important, who else in baseball knew this was going on? Team owners, baseball executives, trainers. This would be the most painful set of hearings baseball has known, but also the most purifying. When they are over, and only when they are over, the commissioner can declare the era over. Until then, Monday’s news media circus will ring as hollow as that home run chase we applauded in 1998.

The hope of many baseball fans was that New York Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez would emerge as an example of someone who played the game the right way, who didn’t cheat to become elite. Rodriguez, if he had kept clean, seemed poised to someday become Major League Baseball’s all-time home-run leader and restore legitimacy to one of the national pastime’s crowning achievements.

Home Run Records Tainted Barry Bonds holds the career home-run record – a mark that will be tainted by the steroid accusations that dogged Bonds for the past several years of his career. Court documents have shown that Bonds tested positive for three types of steroids from 2000-2003. That time frame coincides with a period when Bonds began to show unprecedented power at an age when most hitters’ skills begin to rapidly decline.

Instead of seeing his power deteriorate as befitting a player approaching age 40, Bonds, pictured below, posted career bests in several offensive categories this decade and hit a single season-record 73 home runs in 2001.

Controversy continues to swirl around the sport as revelations of steroid use by Rodriguez and an alleged affiliation with a banned personal trainer have cast a shadow over yet another superstar. His accomplishments now are viewed with the same skepticism that follows those of Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Sammy Sosa and other false heroes of the steroid era.

The sport took another king-sized hit in July when the New York Times reported that Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, the driving force of one of the decade’s most dominant teams, also had tested positive for using banned substances. The Times also had previously reported that Manny Ramirez, one of the game’s most popular and enigmatic stars, was among 104 players said to have tested positive in a steroids survey in 2003.

Stigma of Steroids At a time when the focus should be on the excitement of the pennant races, the sport continues to be stained dishonorably. And until Major League Baseball releases the names of all the players who failed that steroids survey test in 2003, every player will be under a cloud of suspicion, regardless of whether he ever used performance-enhancing drugs.

All the while, fewer fans are able to enjoy the game fully. With each long home run hit, with each dominating pitching performance, the questions linger: Is he on the juice? Is he cheating? Which players are? Which players aren’t? Even the innocent are not exempt from suspicion.

In June, Philadelphia outfielder Raul Ibanez learned a hard lesson about the modern-day steroids era in baseball. Ibanez started 2009 on a tear, topping the National League in four offensive categories through the first two months of the season, and at one point was the leading vote-getter among National League outfielders for the All-Star Game. But he was forced to vigorously defend himself against an anonymous blogger’s accusations that he was using performance-enhancing drugs.

Baseball Has Work to Do There is no evidence that Ibanez has ever violated baseball’s substance abuse policy. Unfortunately, Ibanez and some of the game’s bigger names will remain under a cloud of suspicion as long as the 2003 survey results are sealed.

Baseball has much work to do to repair its image – particularly among the sport’s younger fans – and negate the stigma of steroids that has tainted more than a decade’s worth of records and awards. Unfortunately, that’s proving easier said than done.