By John Feinstein
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, November 19, 2007 6:47 PM

It was Gerald R. Ford who said the following words on August 9, 1974: "Our long national nightmare is over." He was referring to the presidency of Richard M. Nixon and the spectre of Watergate, which hung over the country like a grey veil for more than two years.

Barry Bonds is a baseball player, not a president and so, by definition, his departure from the baseball stage isn't anywhere close to being as historically important as the first and only resignation of a United States president.

But the indictment brought by federal prosecutors against Bonds last week is certainly the beginning of the end of baseball's steroids nightmare. For one thing, Bonds is finished ¿ finally -- as a baseball player. He wanted to stick around for one more season to get to 3,000 hits, but that's not going to happen now. There might have been a team or two willing to sign him as a designated hitter in order to sell a few tickets, but now no one will touch him.

This is a major step in the right direction. Bonds was a cancer, in part because he's such a complete and total jerk, but because his angry denials about his obvious steroid use got so old and so tedious. The only thing more tedious were his defenders saying things like, "he's never tested positive." Actually he did test positive for amphetamines and did admit to a grand jury that he "accidentally" took steroids. Some also made the "he's innocent until proven guilty" argument. Wrong again. Only in a court of law are you innocent until proven guilty. In the court of public opinion you can be guilty at any time, especially when the evidence of your guilt is overwhelming.

Being a hero is not a right granted by the constitution; it is a privilege. Bonds gave up that privilege years ago, as did every single steroid user in every single sport. Marion Jones tearfully admitted she used steroids -- because she was caught dead to rights after years of belligerent denials -- but still insisted it was an accident. What mind-altering drugs are these people on?

Finally, there is the ever-present race card. There will always be some people who insist that when an African-American athlete screws up, those who say and write that he screwed up are doing so for racial reasons.

Oh please.

What percentage of the Hall of Fame vote did Mark McGwire get last year? Let's try 23 percent. Most of those who vote for the Hall of Fame are middle-aged white guys, the kind the race-card players like to point to as being racist. McGwire's white, and the evidence against him is every bit as circumstantial -- maybe more so, given that he has never admitted to even accidentally taking steroids ¿ as the evidence against Bonds. The old white guys turned their back on McGwire -- correctly.

Oh, one more argument the Bonds apologists bring up: We in the media don't like Bonds because he's rude and arrogant and therefore we're out to get him. This argument is at least half-right: most of us in the media don't like Bonds because he's rude and arrogant. But everyone in the media likes Sammy Sosa. He's friendly and cooperative and appears on the whole to be a good guy. But he's going to get nailed too when he comes up for the Hall of Fame and he should. They all should.

Some will say the argument against McGwire and Sosa for the Hall of Fame is different than the one against Bonds, because the case can be made that neither of them would have Hall of Fame numbers if they hadn't cheated. Bonds, they will correctly point out was, without question, a Hall of Famer before he started taking steroids.

They're right. But unlike the NFL's Hall of Fame ballot, there is a character aspect to the baseball Hall of Fame ballot. All the steroid users cheated the game and damaged the game with their lies. If you want to make the argument that everyone was cheating during this era, that's fine. But it's a cop out to say you shouldn't punish anyone simply because you can't catch everyone. You punish those you believe to be guilty.

The best thing for baseball would be for Bonds to be found guilty, either in court or via plea bargain, of the perjury and obstruction of justice charges brought against him. Then there will be no more ifs, ands or buts, and the Bonds defenders will be about as prevalent as the Nixon defenders were in 1974. And Bonds's reputation isn't likely to be resurrected the way Nixon's was because, last I checked, he didn't open diplomatic relations with China. Or with anyone else for that matter.

Next will come the Mitchell report. Again, the best thing for baseball would be if it named as many players as possible. Because here's a fact: almost any player you suspect or suspected is guilty. That's not my opinion, that's the opinion of players currently in the game. The best description I've ever heard about what it was like at the height of the steroids era comes from Ron Darling, the ex-New York Mets and Oakland Athletics pitcher:

"When I first came up in the 80s, the clubhouse after a game was place where you sat around and ate the postgame food and talked about the game and maybe where you were going to go out that night," Darling said. "When I got to Oakland [the 'Bash Brothers' team, led by McGwire and Jose Canseco] in 1992, it was completely different. Guys would come into the clubhouse after a game, change into sweats and go straight to the weight room. They would work out for an hour and then do it again the next day before the game. Every day they worked out at least twice day.

"After a while it occurred to me that there's just no way you can work out that hard, that often, and recover in order to play every day. That's what a lot of people don't understand about steroids: what they do as much as anything is allow you to recover so you can work out much, much harder."

Go back and check what the defenders of Bonds and other steroid users said consistently about them: "Oh, you don't understand, he works out so hard. That's why he's gotten so big, that's why he looks so different."

Wrong again. Yes, the workouts made a difference but the steroids were what allowed the workouts to take place.

It was Mercutio who said, "a pox on both your houses," as he lay dying, another victim of the endless war between the Capulets and the Montagues in Rome and Juliet. In a baseball sense, the players and owners have been the Capulets and the Montagues throughout the steroid era. They have fought one another and kept insisting the other party was guilty all the while the sport was being flushed by the steroid users.

Mercutio's pox has been on their houses for several years now. It isn't gone yet and won't be completely gone for a while. But the indictment of Bonds and the arrival of the Mitchell report are a huge step in the right direction. Throw in a conviction of Bonds -- whether by trial or by plea -- and, unlike Romeo and Juliet, baseball still can be saved.