L.A. Daily News: Modesti: Youngsters removing asterisk from baseball

Hey...when did the Harvard Psilocybin Project open a west coast branch?

Everywhere you looked around baseball, a star of the Steroids Era gone, vanished in a puff of suspicion, sometimes of his own making, though not always so: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa, Mike Piazza, David Wells, Shawn Green. Replaced by someone new, fresh and exciting.

Normally baseball history cannot be cut up into distinct generations. Generations overlap as faces come and go, an influential player or group of similar players weaving one thread with another player’s or group’s. But after the publication of last winter’s Mitchell Report, summing up if not actually tying up the loose ends of the Steroids Era, it felt as if baseball had a chance to move from one grim chapter to another brighter one with a single turn over the page. Tired, grizzled BALCO Brigade, out; young, hopeful Salvation Army, in.

...But doing right on the field is only part of the job for baseball’s new generation. Or there’d be no need for a new generation.

The top three things we want from the young players who will define the sport for the next 10 to 20 years:

No needles. No drugs. No cheating. No need to elaborate. You’ll feel pressure to juice yourself up. Don’t.