It would be nice to put the Alex Rodriguez (aka A-Roid!) story firmly behind us and move on - pitchers and catchers have reported to spring training, the local weather has been unseasonably warm, young love is in the air, the NHL season officially ended yesterday (I think). But something has been bugging me, and I think it has to do with an invasion of personal space.

There's been some talk about erasing baseball stats from the record book - those that have been tainted by steroid use. That would be Bonds, Clemens, A-Roid, McGwire, maybe Sosa, depending on how you define "taint". Commissioner Bud Selig himself has been promoting the idea.

There are a few ethical and practical problems with purging steroid-tainted stats from the official record book - the most obvious one being that the "Official Record Book" doesn't actually exist; it's a myth, and despite Baseball's best efforts it's about as real as Bigfoot*.

Baseball stats are facts, and you can't copyright facts. They exist outside the sphere of MLB's control - pretty amazing, given MLB's anti-trust exemption and control-freak nature. If I choose to publish my own Baseball Encyclopedia, I don't need MLB's permission to do so; if I list Barry Bonds as the all-time home king with 762 career homers, MLB's lawyers can't force me to remove his name because that's what Bud Selig wants.

The myth of the official record book dates back to 1961, when Commissioner Ford Frick placed an asterisk beside Roger Maris' record. Only, (1) this never actually happened; the asterisk is also a myth; and (2) even if it were true, it would be irrelevent. In 1961, there were zero baseball encyclopedias (the McMillan was first published in 1969); league offices still had some measure of control over their stats, as no one could check the 1962 Encyclopedia to see if there was, in fact, an asterisk beside Maris' name.

Whatever control the Commissioner had over league stats was lost in the early 1980's. Amateur researchers pored through thousands of old box scores and discovered numerous errors in baseball's record-keeping; they discovered that Ty Cobb had 4189 careers hits, not 4191; Walter Johnson had 417 wins and not 416; in 1930, Hack Wilson had 191 RBI, not 190, and so on. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn announced that a "statute of limitations" had passed on the old records, and that the old stats would remain unchanged.

So, a group of researchers published their own encyclopedia, Total Baseball, with all of the corrected numbers. Its first edition outsold the Baseball Encyclopedia, prompting the folks at MacMillan, being the good businessmen that they were, to do a massive audit of their own product and update all of the old records. And that was that; the power that the Commissioner's Office has over MLB's record books** pales in comparison to the free market. And for 50 years, the free market has both demanded and rewarded efforts to complete and correct the historical record as much as possible.

I've been a huge baseball fan since I was a little kid - but as I enter my mid-30's, one problem I've had to struggle with is that Major League Baseball breaks, in many ways and on a daily basis, my own code of ethics that I've spent my entire adult life carefully constructing. How can I spend time and money on a group of oligarchs who are the antithesis of everything that I think our society needs to work well into the future?

I don't have a good answer - and I admit that I spend much less money on baseball that I used to. But I have managed to convince myself that I can remain a fan because I have an ownership stake in the game. Yes, MLB is a legal cartel and a private club - but the game's entire statistical history, from the 1860's to the final out of the 2008 World Series, is in the public domain. It's beyond the reach of the oligarchs or the players or the government or the media or anyone else who might think about dicking around with it.

No matter how unethical an operation Major League Baseball runs, and no matter how overpaid/spoiled/juiced the players are - there is something comforting in knowing that as soon as something happens on a ball field, they lose control of it. Sure, MLB retains the audio and video rights, but the actual event belongs to the fans. Baseball can't arbitrarily remove anybody's record from anywhere; if Albert Pujols hits an RBI double, then it goes right into the books (actually, the official scorer has a couple of days to decide if was actually a double; but once it's in the books, it can't be taken out).

Willie Mays' 1962 season? That belongs to us.

So does Sandy Koufax' 1966 season. And Smokey Joe Wood's 1912 season, and Walter Johnson's entire career. They all belong to us.

The Dodgers' first championship in Los Angeles, in 1959? Yup, belongs to us. So do the Go-Go Sox from the same year.

Ted William's .406 batting average in 1941? Belongs to us. So do George Brett's .390 batting average in 1980 and Pat Tabler's career .489 average with the bases loaded - or Tony Pena's .169 average from last year. Good, great, ordinary or just awful - they all belong to us.

Hack Wilson's 1930 season, when he had 190 191 RBI? That belongs to us too.

Barry Bonds' 762 career homers? For better or for worse, they belong to us. So do Pete Rose's managerial career and Dwight Gooden's lost potential - they're not always pleasant, but you can't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

We also own the statistical gaps - Lou Gehrig's missing denouement, as well as Lyman Bostock's career and Ted Williams' war years and roughly a dozen years from Shoeless Joe Jackson's career. They're as much a part of us as the actual numbers.

We are all (or most of us) thinking individuals, and we understand that baseball records are not absolute truths. Ted Williams' .406 batting average in 1941 is not any kind of record, nor are Denny McLain's 31 wins from 1968. But they are the benchmarks for modern baseball against which all other performances are measured. Fans will, collectively, at some point, decide which home run totals are the true benchmarks of the past century.

And if you don't want Bonds or Clemens or A-Rod in your own personal record book, that's fine - I've included removal instructions below***. Just so long as you do it within your own personal space, and not mine; it's not about steroid use, it's a simple principle, that no matter what nonsense occurs within the sport, that the historical record remains untouched. The juicers will eventually be placed in their proper context - assuming that there remains a context to place them in.****

* of course, MLB does keep its own records, and they are entitled to call them "official" if they want to. Perhaps a better analogy would be the Kilogram. There exists, in France, an "Official Kilogram"; it is a hunk of metal that weighs - you guessed it - a kilogram, and sits in a climate-controlled vault where it remains the ultimate kilogram reference point. However, should this Kilogram be vandalized so that it weighs something other than a kilogram - well, I don't think that will throw our entire weight system into chaos and force everyone to buy a new set of scales; a kilogram will still be a kilogram, and France will just have to create a new "official" one.

** of course, one thing Selig CAN do is create confusion. The Maris asterisk may be a myth, but it's a damn persistent one. If Selig announces that Hank Aaron is once again home run king, it will likely be as successful as Selig's other Hank Aaron-related initiatives - quick, who were the winners of the 2008 Hank Aaron Award? - but there will always be someone who will remind us 500 times every year that Aaron is the real home run champ because Bud Selig said so.

Then again, I'm not sure if this will actually serve the intended purpose. Within a generation, the question of whether Ruth or Maris owned the record was settled overwhelmingly in Maris' favour - and the legend of the asterisk certainly helped sway public opinion

*** (1) Buy recent Baseball Encyclopedia, $20 at Amazon.com (2) Buy Wite-Out, about $1.70 at Grand & Toy (3) Apply Wite-Out to offending numbers and let dry (4) Display on your coffee table

**** or, as Charlton Heston might say: "Take your stinking paws off my baseball stats, you damned dirty ape!"