The game’s most hallowed record has been broken, but forgive baseball if its celebrations seem a little muted this week.

Barry Bonds, and the endless controversy that comes with him, is not quite so easy to portray as the hero compared to the man he surpasses, Hank Aaron.

Baseball commissioner Bug Selig, a close friend of Aaron, won’t say it explicitly, but his actions suggest he is embarrassed we ever got here.

Selig had little reaction when Bonds slammed his 755th home run on Saturday night against San Diego.

The commissioner was not in attendance when Bonds eclipsed Aaron’s mark Tuesday night.

How could the game sit back and allow allegations of widespread steroid use to become such a problem that the issue would overshadow what should be the game’s proudest moment?

How is it that it took until 2002 for the league to introduce steroid tests, and until 2006 before it introduced serious penalties for violations?

Selig has stopped short of criticizing Bonds, but his feelings toward the game’s imminent new home run king were clear in an interview with the New York Times earlier in the season.

“I am protective of the sport’s image,” Selig said when asked about Bonds, “but sometimes things don’t always work out exactly as you wanted.”

Selig is well aware that this problem was created on his watch. Although Selig was not officially appointed commissioner until 1998, he was effectively the acting commissioner from 1992, filling the void created by the resignation of Fay Vincent.

That put Selig in charge throughout the decade when steroids took their hold on the game.

It has been suggested many times that baseball knew what was going on, but was happy to turn a blind eye as a new breed of sluggers - the likes of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and later Bonds - thrilled fans with their epic home run chases.

Baseball’s image had suffered a huge blow when the season was cut short by a player strike in 1994 and, the argument goes, it was the 1998 home run race between McGwire and Sosa that helped put fans back into the bleachers.

Selig has insisted the argument does not stand up.

“It’s a myth I hear repeated on TV all the time, that it was good for business,” he said.  “It wasn’t by itself.  Attendance from 1998 to 1999, one year after the McGwire and Sosa thing, our attendance actually went down.  They like to say we turned our backs on it.  Turned our backs on what?  I’ve interviewed clubhouse guys, reporters, general managers, and trainers who all said they were unaware of steroid use back then.  So how were we supposed to know?”

Behind the scenes, baseball was working on the issue.  In 1998, Selig commissioned a panel of team physicians and medical experts to conduct a study on the likely effects of steroid use. In 2001, Major League Baseball sent to all teams a report outlining the known effects of several performance-enhancing substances.

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The problem was that none of this actually stopped players from using them.  There was no testing for steroids.  The reason for that, Selig has insisted, was the stance of the players’ union, which refused to subject its members to such tests.

“No owner ever fought testing,” Selig said.  “And people think the commissioner is omnipotent, but unfortunately that isn’t true.  Everybody knows the union fought it.  To put it on ownership or the commissioner’s office is revisionist history.”

The first breakthrough came in 2001, when baseball was able to introduce testing in the minor leagues, paving the way for full testing to begin in 2002.  But that was too late to determine whether steroids were the cause of the late 1990s power surge.

And it was too late to spare the blushes on baseball’s face today.

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