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NEW YORK -- Now having breathed public air for 24 hours, belonging to the world instead of an attorney's brief case, the Mitchell report's most important aspect is that it exists, in one volume, stamped officially by baseball. By its simple existence, the hard details of steroid use by players and of negligence by management, long rejected by the baseball hierarchy, now carry the imprimatur of the commissioner and his lieutenants, the very same people who, for the past six years, have called anyone who criticized their lack of action "revisionist." As late as December 2005, Bud Selig ridiculed the suggestion he needed to investigate; the man who once laughed at the idea now stands at the front of the room, the chief proponent of its necessity.

George Mitchell emphasized the future, the need to think about what must be done over what has been done. He recommended to Selig that players named in the report not be punished for fear of reigniting old grievances with the Players Association. The report, Mitchell said, should be regarded mostly as an initial blueprint toward a new future. That is the statesman in him.

Yet, by choosing not to address the record book in his report, Mitchell chose not to walk down the most important hallway of the steroids era, the corridor that -- more than player suspensions or cancelled checks to drug dealers or the sensation of the latest hot name -- will reveal the true cost of this era.

At issue is whether the price of the steroids era will be a Hall of Fame that doesn't include Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire, and whether players such as Frank Thomas (who voluntarily cooperated with the Mitchell investigators) or even Alex Rodriguez and others believed to be clean will have an asterisk attached to their accomplishments, too. For in this basket of dirty laundry, it is impossible to separate the clean shirts from the dirty socks.

Selig and Hall voters all would have benefited from a Mitchell roadmap. Like so many athletes bulked up by steroids over the past 15 years, the era's numbers sit too big on the page. Clemens' seven Cy Young Awards, his 354 wins and his five 20-win seasons are impossible to separate from pages 167 to 175 of the report, where former New York City police officer-turned-personal trainer Brian McNamee says he injected Clemens with steroids four times over a seven-week period in 1998, and where he says the practice continued for years.

Over the past 24 hours, Clemens has paved a road back to Bonds. One is the greatest position player of his era; the other, the greatest pitcher. In terms of their baseball downfalls, Clemens and McNamee closely resemble another dubious pair, Bonds and Greg Anderson.

Perhaps by the end of the 1997 season, Clemens already had built credentials worthy of Hall of Fame discussion (213 wins, four Cy Young Awards and an MVP trophy), but his elevation to legend paralleled that of Bonds. During the same tainted time, at the same time in their lives -- they were born two years apart -- their results were similar. Bonds won four MVP awards during his alleged steroid years; Clemens won three Cy Youngs.

Mitchell wanted to speak with McGwire, to discuss his career for the report. McGwire declined.

Today, the names resonate, as do the implications. But history is a fast-moving train. Mitchell passed on his opportunity to talk to the future, a future that, as time progresses and the present fades, will never know the details as we know them or feel the passion we feel for or against asterisks, for expunging records or doing nothing. The reason the 1919 Chicago White Sox remain relevant is that their punishment still is very much alive today. The punishment -- permanent banishment, through their lives and deaths, the lives of their children and grandchildren -- and not the crime of gambling, is the reason gambling is considered baseball's greatest sin. The steroids era deserves a similar, lasting treatment.

By omitting a discussion of the record book -- and, to a lesser extent, the Hall of Fame -- Mitchell missed an important opportunity to provide context for the years and the actions he spent 21 months investigating. No recommendation regarding the numbers is the most disappointing aspect of the Mitchell report, for any degree of closure or context is impossible without an overarching explanation of the ultimate cost of the era. What Mitchell has done by way of accounting is compile years of expense receipts with no balance sheet.

By not addressing the statistics produced during more than a decade of drug use, Mitchell left his report open to the notion that the sensation produced by the names in the report is more important than the long-term implications of how this period in history is interpreted.

Without Mitchell, the responsibility now belongs to Selig to address the record book and to the members of the Baseball Writers of America to deal with the Hall of Fame. Selig's next challenge, should he choose to accept it, is to begin an official commissioner's report on the record book. He should ask himself the question of how he believes future fans and history should interpret the feats of the post-strike years, and he should answer it officially. Such a document certainly would answer the question, should it need to be asked 50 years from now: Why isn't Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds or Rafael Palmeiro in the Hall of Fame? The years 1995-2007 should contain an asterisk with a simple explanation that might read: "These years were played in a period of rampant, unchecked drug use." The records can stand, the championship banners can still wave; but fans and historians years from now and beyond will have a degree of context that seems obvious today but will disappear over time.

Or perhaps Selig will allow Hall of Famers Frank Robinson and Jim Bunning to have their way and suddenly, like an NCAA Tournament or Tour de France violation, wipe players clean from the record book, and names and awards will begin to disappear from the ledger. Selig needs to take the lead and tell fans how Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, Clemens, Bonds, Ken Caminiti and other players who performed at the top of their sport should be viewed.

Finally, Selig could choose to do nothing, to consider this period of financial success and moral calamity unfortunate and regrettable, and ultimately decide that any notation or altering of the record book is inappropriate.

But he must say something, for silence on this issue, which is the future, undermines some of the points to the investigation.

"I want to congratulate Senator Mitchell on a job well done," Bunning said Thursday in a statement. "However, there is one glaring hole in the Mitchell report, and that is the failure to address how to handle the records of those players who not only cheated by using steroids, but also broke a federal law that has been on the books since 1991. The selfish acts of those individuals who tried to cheat the system have brought the integrity of the game to its knees. It brings into question the legitimacy of any records achieved while using performance enhancing drugs."

Mitchell was charged with a fact-finding mission, and in those facts are details whose impact can be felt only in the Baseball Encyclopedia. During his press conference Thursday, Mitchell appeared content to leave interpretations of his findings to the historians. Later that day, Selig said the report was important because it spoke not only for the present but for unborn generations. Not discussing the records is the equivalent of telling history that nothing happened, the equivalent of accepting a Black Sox fix but offering no public acknowledgement.

Selig took a first huge step by acknowledging the era with his report. But if the commissioner truly wants to begin a new era, he needs to close the one door to the steroid era that remains open.

Howard Bryant is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN the Magazine. He is the author of "Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston" and "Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball." He can be reached at Howard.Bryant@espn3.com.