Is A-Rod report the tipping point?

Maybe this is it.

Maybe the report that Alex Rodriguez used steroids in 2003 is going to be the tipping point. Maybe a report of steroid use by Rodriguez -- hands down the best player in baseball for the better part of a decade -- is going to the point that we all come to an inevitable realization.

Everyone was doing it. Everyone.

Barry Bonds was doing it. Mark McGwire was doing it. Sammy Sosa was doing it. Roger Clemens was doing it. Roger Clemens was doing it. Alex Rodriguez was doing it. Rafael Palmeiro was doing it. Mike Cameron was doing it. Jay Gibbons was doing it. Jose Guillen was doing it. Neifi Perez was doing it. Jason Grimsley was doing it. Matt Lawton was doing it. Rafael Betancourt was doing it. Juan Rincon was doing it. Alex Sanchez was doing it.

Everyone was doing it. Everyone.

Maybe this report will help us put the last 15 years of baseball history into perspective. Maybe this actually will salvage the reputations of players like Bonds and McGwire and Clemens, players who appeared to have no shot at ever reaching the Hall of Fame. The players who have become outcasts in the game weren't exceptions. They were doing what everyone else was doing. They just happened to be big enough names that they got caught.

Just look at the Rodriguez report. More than 100 players tested positive for steroids in 2003. Only one name -- A-Rod -- has been released. More than 100 other names still are out there, and we have no idea who they are. We might never know who they are.

Baseball has had a tremendous steroid problem. Maybe it still has a tremendous steroid problem. We don't even know if we can trust the new testing policy, particularly as it comes to high-tech enhancers like human growth hormone. But if steroid use was so rampant that even Rodriguez -- who some have used as a prime example of a clean superstar -- was using, how can we assume that anyone in the game wasn't using? Given how difficult it is to vault yourself from Triple-A to the majors, from the bench to the starting lineup, from mediocrity to the All-Star Game, wouldn't it have been stupid not to keep up?

Some are saying that A-Rod's reputation will be ruined by this report. That's probably true.

But this report also ought to make us look a little harder at what really was happening in baseball over the last 15 or 20 years. It also ought to make us look a little harder how quickly we've condemned Bonds and McGwire and Clemens. Are we really going to wipe out an entire decade or two of baseball history? Or can we finally start to judge that era in the context of what was happening rather than trying to pretend its biggest stars never even existed?