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Well, we now know the results of the long awaited Mitchell Report and it certainly contained some bombshells.

Names were named, and some prominent ones at that; names that will be, in all probability, linked to a connection with steroids or other performance enhancing drugs for years to come.

Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Dave Justice, Gary Sheffield, Paul Lo Duca; just a few of the big names that were called out in this report and branded as players who used performance enhancers.

There is no question that the guy with the most to lose from the results of this report is Clemens; everyone and their brother expected Barry Bonds to have his name in this report, but now Clemens must be put in the same boat as Bonds and we must question his numbers and records as we have questioned those of Bonds.

For the record, through his attorney, Clemens has denied the accusations made in the Mitchell Report. But deny them or not, baseball fans will now see Clemens as another one of those players that used performance enhancing drugs and his image could be forever tarnished with his Hall of Fame entry in question.

Still, the big question to me from this report is this; will the report hurt or help Major League Baseball? My answer is that we may not know the answer for quite a while.

In the short term, you have a report that was put together with seeming care by a former senator who seems beyond reproach in terms of his integrity and care to make this report complete and accurate. Of course, critics will point out that he has had ties to the Boston Red Sox organization, and that no Boston players were fingered in the report, but when his committee had no subpoena power and current players would not speak with him, he used the sources available...former clubhouse attendants for the New York Yankees and the New York Mets.

Should it then surprise you that a lot of the players named in the report were players on those teams?

This report, most importantly, provides suggestions and guidelines for Major League Baseball to begin the process of getting itself out from under the steroids cloud, and I hope the powers that be follow those recommendations. Begin a strict drug testing policy, outsource the testing and results and get it away from Major League Baseball so no one will question any test result. And, players too must be willing to be randomly tested so fans can once again start to trust the stars who play the game.

And that is the key to whether this report will be helpful or harmful to the game of baseball. If the recommendations are followed and players open up to random testing, it can be a solid starting point to get the game out of what will always be known as the "Steroids Era."

If the recommendations are not followed and players continue to stonewall, the game, although still popular, will never get away from those who will question the accomplishments of players who used illegal drugs and even the accomplishments of great teams that had players on those teams that were users.

For baseball, way more than any other sport, puts value on individual numbers, and not as much on team numbers. The 56 game hitting streak, 511 career wins by Cy Young, and 756 career homers by Henry Aaron are just a few examples. How many of the homers by Barry Bonds or the wins by Roger Clemens do you take away or question because of their involvement in this scandal? We may never know.

I love baseball, always have. I am saddened by what has taken place in the sport, but I too, share some blame in all of this. I turned my head back in 1998 when Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were chasing the great Roger Maris and his all time home run record. I got caught up in all the hype even as I saw pictures that compared a young Sosa and McGuire to the puffed up players they had become by 1998, and I dismissed that look to working out. Ironically, those players were not mentioned in the Mitchell Report.

There is little question that those who were named in the Mitchell Report, from big name to little known player, will have their reputations in the game tarnished for years to come. But now, with this report, the bigger issue is whether Major League Baseball and its players can recover some of the integrity and trust they lost with their fans.

Only time will tell if that will happen, but I do believe the Mitchell Report is a good place to start that process.