It's time to celebrate Howard's run at Maris' old mark

	Ryan Howard needs only nine home runs to surpass Roger Maris' former record of 61 in a season. AP

We don't need the pregame news conferences in front of the national media. We don't need the specially numbered baseballs with the watermark that can be seen only under an ultraviolet light. We don't need the Major League Baseball security people deployed around the outfield seats. We don't need the commissioner of baseball telling us what is a record and what is not. We don't need the backstories, the tinkling piano music, the hollow declarations (which never did carry real meaning) of how the most enduring American game is being "saved." This time we will decide for ourselves.

With 24 games to play, Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies needs nine home runs to break the single-season record of 61 homers set by Roger Maris in 1961. You might think Maris no longer holds the record, but I'm not so sure it hasn't been returned to him, in the same way (albeit unofficially) the world record in the 100 meters was returned to its rightful, respective owners after Ben Johnson, Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin forfeited their claims on account of being frauds. There is some justice in Maris' regaining stature while his conquerors get asterisked.

Maris' record stood for 37 years. Then, in the eyeblink of four seasons (1998-2001), smack in what we now know to be the height of the Steroid Era, it was smashed six times by three men who flat-out flunk our sniff test when it comes to being the genuine article (Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds).

You can, as commissioner Bud Selig does, choose to accept their records as legitimate because you would rather not wade into the dirty morass of the Steroid Era. You would rather not be left to make impossibly difficult calls and, especially in the commissioner's case, invite judgments of culpability on yourself. Like most difficulties in life, it's much easier to do nothing, a part of human nature that explains how baseball owners and the union squandered trust and faith in the game in the first place. Their crime, framed by revisionists as some grand conspiracy to keep the turnstiles spinning, actually was one of passivity.

I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen. I'm not assigning full value to their numbers. They were the best of their generation, and that deserves some respect. But I refuse to hold them up as the all-time standard-bearers of the sport.

Every once in while you will hear about someone setting a record for "the modern era,'' or the post-1900 seasons -- even though major leagues existed prior to that nice round number. Maybe what we're entering now is the postmodern era, or the Testing Era. Be careful, though, not to call it the Clean Era. Have we not learned anything from Jason Grimsley? If a journeyman middle reliever can shoot himself up full of performance-enhancing drugs while passing his drug tests, why shouldn't we still be suspicious of them all?

Baseball has made strides. We're past the Wild West days of the Steroid Era when lawlessness reigned. We at least have controls in place to stop some of the doping. But let's admit it: Baseball and the union, in improving their drug-testing plan incrementally, as if this business is all new to the sporting world, has done only as much as they need to do to keep Congress off their back and the casual fan placated.

Think about it. Players are free to use human growth hormone (which lacks a reliable test) and Modafinil (which is not on the banned list). They receive as few as one unannounced test all year. (Players know they are tested as part of their routine spring training physicals. They then face the possibility of perhaps only one unannounced test until next spring training. Some players were tested up to three more times during the 2005 season. Most were not tested in the offseason.)