Regardless of whether or not there are punitive measures taken against Roger Clemens, his career has been marred beyond cleansing by the accusation of steroid abuse. His complete inability to prove his innocence with anything other than hearsay feels like a twist of the knife for lifelong baseball fans like me. A verdict of “not guilty” would only translate into “there isn’t enough direct evidence to show that Roger Clemens is guilty.” The Rocket has spent the later years of his career in an artificial orbit and is burning up upon reentry.

This hurts because Roger Clemens is an icon of more than just pitching. I remember seeing an article years ago that detailed the legendary Clemens workout. There were interviews with much younger players who went down to Houston to Rocket’s gym. Twenty-year-olds tried to keep up with Roger and unanimously declared that it was the hardest workout in which they had ever participated.

That was a different Roger Clemens. In the eyes of the world, that was the Roger Clemens that accepted no excuse, that exemplified what hard work could accomplish in a sport that was beginning to strike down its heroes such as Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro. I cannot express how painful it is to know that even the greatest pitcher of my lifetime could not stay true to his sport.

Baseball’s continuation as our national pastime is resting on how it comes out of the steroid years. However demoralizing it may be to watch, trials like the Clemens case are what baseball needs to get past steroids. Roger Clemens must be made into an example. Steroids, like every other drug, lift one high enough so that they shatter when they fall — even if they are the most iron-wrought man in baseball.

Young players should be made to watch how Roger Clemens tumbles over the next few years just at the insinuation of his guilt. In the end, the Rocket will retain nothing. The reward for succumbing to steroid abuse at any point in one’s career, for any reason, is to be embarrassed in front of Congress and in front of every person who ever held one up above themselves.

As a baseball fan, I feel betrayed. All I can do is hope when I go to Cooperstown on some beautiful summer day twenty years from now, perhaps with my father on one side and my son on the other, the truth is there to be seen. I hope that the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame will not purge this chapter of baseball history from view to save face, but instead will openly document and showcase it. I hope there will be an “asterisk” room where an iron plaque will hang for each of the players who played the game with skill but without dignity.

There I could show my son the faces of The Black Sox, Pete Rose, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds and, sadly enough, Roger Clemens. This would be the room for players who represent baseball’s missteps — players who exhibit the fact that our national pastime is just as morally fragile and subject to temptation as the nation that created it. That is the lesson I want my children to learn at the Hall of Fame — accountability for ones’ actions is as American as baseball.

Send Sean your thoughts about the future of baseball at [email protected]