Sports history revolves around debate, and baseball, more than any other sport, remains steeped in history, tradition and hypothetical tussles only possible on a fictional cornfield in Iowa.

Could Johan Santana survive Murderer’s Row? Would Albert Pujols batter Cy Young the way he batters Cy Young hopefuls? Could a steroid free Rafael Palmeiro hit 35 home runs in a season?

We’ve never been able to compare players across eras. Unfortunately the nebulous fog of steroids has made it impossible to know how to rank players within the same era. Good luck, Hall of Fame voters.

This much can’t be argued: we will never know exactly who indulged, or the extent of the effect, or whose Cooperstown plaque is so phony it should be made of painted tinfoil instead of bronze.

Many have taken the Frank Robinson school of thought and already banished Palmeiro among others from the Hall of Fame in their minds. And while Palmeiro has been convicted via urine sample, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and even Sammy Sosa have been essentially convicted in the court of public opinion. Surely extremists are out there that would prefer the 1990s be stricken from the record.

Which is, of course, ridiculous. Are we simply going to forget an entire decade of baseball actually happened? Is Tommy Lee Jones going to go Men-in-Black, simply pull out a memory eraser and clear our minds with the flash of a little red bulb?

Is the Hall really so pure anyways? How many pre-1960s Hall members were overtly racist? What advantage did white players have before Jackie Robinson introduced a whole new element to the sport? Ty Cobb was utterly despised, but he was still the best hitter of his time. Mickey Mantle drank himself silly, but is still arguably the most legendary player this side of Babe Ruth. Ted Williams raised Ted Williams Jr., but Cooperstown doesn’t care. Pete Rose gambled on baseball…um, hold off on that one.

Allowing players with a pall of cheating hanging over them (the ultimate shortcoming of character in sport) strikes some as the death of integrity. Not me. The cheaters’ names are forever tarnished, along with some innocent ones. The most important way to address integrity is not through a futile effort to cleanse a dirty past, but to look to the future while learning from the past. Police can’t curb crime by dedicating themselves to cases a decade old; neither can baseball.

Besides, who is to say that if steroids were available and left unchecked, players like Hall of Famers Bob Gibson or Mike Schmidt would not have been extremely tempted to try them?

Apparently not Bob Gibson or Mike Schmidt. Both have admitted their competitiveness may have led them to try the "clear" rather than stay in the clear. What makes the great players great is that unrelenting drive to get better. Purists will argue older players "did it the right way," but they may very well have been just as amoral as those they would banish, given such opportunity and incentive. We will never know.

This desire to win is the reason the player’s union needed to look out for its ultra-competitive constituents, and the reason management needed to protect the integrity of its sport. Instead both did a mind-boggling Helen Keller impression for over a decade. And we are considering keeping the greatest players of an era from the Hall, while merely slinging small doses of column ink at Donald Fehr and Bud Selig.

Forget the fact that McGwire hit 49 as a rookie, or that Barry Bonds won three MVPs built like a curtain rod. They presumably juiced in an era where baseball acted as though steroids were as illegal as Flintstone vitamins, allowing users to blossom and thrive, and leaving non-users desperate to keep up.

And if Palmeiro finds himself locked out Cooperstown, it should be because of his borderline status entering the scandal, and the way he thumbed his nose at baseball by continuing to use as the sport tried to rid itself of the cheating it used to legalize.

But Palmeiro aside, no one has a clue how deep the rabbit tunnel goes. Yes, power numbers exploded. But so did training methods. Does anybody really think eliminating steroids from the sport will take baseball back to the early 1980s? Please. There are more athletes from more countries, and they all train harder than ever. Just check out a game on ESPN Classic. Find a middle infielder who looks like he has ever seen a weight room. Compare the number of Latin and Asian players to those on today’s rosters.

The sport has evolved, yet again. The Dead Ball Era eventually transitioned into Age of the Slugger. Gibson’s 1.12 ERA helped beat down the mound a few inches. But like Ruth and Gibson, steroids only played a role, not the role in the offensive explosion of the "Steroid Era."

As for the Hall, the only credible way to evaluate candidacy has always been comparing players to others in their era. And in a sport steeped with imperfect tradition and history, that is unfortunately the imperfect course it has to maintain. Baseball just has to remember forever why we argued over these players in the first place.