They are the new drum roll of shame, the names released in the Mitchell Report, more players that have been tarnished with baseball’s new scarlet letter.

More names that are testament to the fact that the lords of baseball did next to nothing to deal with a problem that was as obvious as Jose Canseco’s physique. Bud Selig. The owners. General managers. The Players Association. They, too, should hang their heads in shame. Everyone knew there was a serious problem, and yet nothing was done.

Who wanted to rain on the parade?

Not when baseballs were flying out of the park in record numbers back there in that summer of ’98, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa became household names, and people kept rushing through those turnstiles. Not when players’ salaries kept going as up and away as another Barry Bonds home run, players living the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

And at the heart of all this?

It was so tempting.

Who wouldn’t want a little edge when it might mean the difference between the anonymity of the minor leagues compared to the money and celebrity of the big leagues? Who wouldn’t want a little edge when you’re trying to hang in the bigs another few years, because where are you ever going to make this kind of money in the real world?

Who doesn’t want to be Cinderella, if only for a little while?

Especially in light of the drug culture. George Mitchell spoke Thursday of the drug culture throughout baseball? What about the drug culture in the country, both illegal and legal? Drugs to take away your headache. Drugs to lower your cholesterol. Drugs to jump-start your sex life. Drugs to get you through the night. Drugs to control your mood. Drugs for everything.

You can’t turn on television without being bombarded by the drug culture we all live in.

Is it all that surprising that there’s a generation of athletes seduced by performance-enhancing drugs?

Call it human nature meets the drug culture.

And it wasn’t just guys trying to get into the game, as understandable as that might be.

Why would Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens — the best power hitter of his generation and the best pitcher — risk all they had accomplished? It couldn’t be just the money. They both already had more than anyone could ever spend.

So what was it?

I suspect it was human nature, too, the desire to stay young, to stay in the game.

For this is no country for old men. Or for old women, either.

We live in a country where youth is treated as if it were some sort of merit badge. So we have 50-year-old women who dress in ways 50-year-old women never dressed a generation ago. We have 50-year-old men who all but live in the gym, fighting time as much as the treadmill. We have an industry of plastic surgery, and tummy tucks and hair coloring and hair weaves and all the other accoutrements designed to make us look younger than we are, be younger than we are. Because not to be young is to no longer count, to be dismissed the way aging athletes who have lost a step are.

So you had both Bonds and Clemens trying to stay in the game, as if neither one of them could walk away from the celebrity, the spotlight, the buzz, whatever. The same way Michael Jordan couldn’t walk away from the NBA when everyone knew he should. As if the perks are so great that no one ever walks away willingly anymore.

Yes, we’ve come to learn that Barry Bonds supposedly was so jealous of McGwire and Sosa back there in the summer of ’98, so frustrated because they got all the love when he was the better player, that he was going to do what it took to hit more home runs, whatever it took.

But at the heart of that was the desire to stave off aging, to remain young and strong and vital in a game when time is as much the enemy as the guy on the mound trying to strike you out. At the heart of this was hubris. Bonds wanted to be the all-time home-run king, whatever it took, and Clemens still wanted to be the Rocket, still be able to throw fastballs by people the way he once could, whatever that took.

So they, too, had their own little dance with the devil, too.

Nor are we blameless here either, all of us who follow sports, care about them.

For we have been the great enablers.

Common sense tells us that baseball players can’t be better in their late 30s and early 40s than they were a decade earlier, but we so much wanted to believe them.

Don’t they take care of themselves more?

Don’t they work out more?

So what if their bodies are dramatically different than they used to be?

And, hey, where’s the actual proof?

These are the things we told ourselves over and over, because we so much wanted to believe. Because if they weren’t super human than why were they making so much money and being treated like kings? So we believed them the way Dorothy once believed in the Wizard of Oz, the way we all want to believe in the magician, until the lights come up and everyone goes home and it all seems so tawdry.

For there are no winners here.

What this steroid era does is tarnish everyone, the ones named and the ones who so far have slid. What it does is question all the records that baseball holds so sacred. What it does is stain the so-called National Pastime. What it does is play us all for fools, everyone who followed baseball, cared about it, took it seriously.

For let’s not kid ourselves here. Bonds and Clemens and the others named on Thursday are not the only ones tarnished here. Not by a long shot.

There’s a lot of shame to go around.

breynold@projo.com