Today, Barry Bonds inches closer to breaking the home run record set by Hank Aaron more than 30 years ago. Baseball fans—according to some, divided along lines of race–hotly debate Bonds’ record book eligibility. And, because Major League Baseball has backed itself into a corner, it is doing the only thing it can do: nothing.

MLB cannot embrace Bonds because, while he hasn’t been found guilty of using illegal steroids, he is surrounded by the BALCO controversy and associated with others who have pled or appear guilty. The long-term risk is untenable.

At the same time, Major League Baseball cannot condemn a man who is, to date, innocent. So right now we see MLB gently observing and applauding Bonds without taking the lead.

The question for Major League Baseball is, at the end of the day, do you embrace or erase Barry Bonds? Because of its lack of action years ago – when it could certainly see the bionic drug problems on the horizon, but made the decision to do nothing (and was widely accused of moral compromise for the sake of selling tickets and putting fans in the seats) – MLB is losing credibility among the American public. That public is in the uncomfortable position of acknowledging that their national pastime may reflect modern-day society a little more than they’d like it to.

Could this situation have been avoided? Not likely – we are just at the beginning of a performance-enhancing drug tsunami, which will only become increasingly torrential as ever-more sophisticated drugs enter the marketplace. To be sure, the situation could have been dealt with more deftly.

Crisis communications is about leadership, courage, and integrity. The longer a problem is ignored, the greater the chance of it metastasizing into a crisis. Here, a garden variety substance abuse problem has grown into a crisis that raises questions about the very credibility of the game, with many people pondering a drug issue through racial lenses.

Had MLB addressed the steroid issue years ago, the racial division surrounding Bonds’ record would be a non-issue.

So what do we learn here? When addressing a problematic situation, you must look not only at the present, but also at the past and especially the future. MLB would have been wise to realize what many of us have learned in our personal relationships—that ignoring all those little red flags only leads to very big and very sticky situations.