The FanIQ Article Challenge this week asked how baseball can solve its seemingly never-ending steroid scandal. I'm pleased to announce that GoBigBlue won this week's contest with his stirring take on what baseball needs to do: Get everyone - Bud Selig, the owners, the players - to tell the truth, and tell it now.

On a summer night in 1969, a young boy sat at Tiger Stadium, in downtown Detroit, watching his heroes in person for the first time.

The boy's excitement was unrelenting. Look!!, he would say...there's Bill Freehan..Norm Cash, Mickey Stanley..Al Kaline. The boy ate a hot dog, drank a soda pop, talked about baseball with his Uncle Bob, and Denny McClain and the Tigers won the game over the White Sox. It was a beautiful night, the boy talked about the game long after it was over. One thing never was discussed that night by the boy, or his Uncle Bob: Steroids, and performance enhancing drugs.

Purity in a young boy and his Uncle. The national pastime. As fans, will we ever be able to enjoy that again? As a lifelong baseball fan, i would have said yes every time. However, I am now convinced that the one and only thing that will bring baseball back to America, back to the fans, back to it's rightful place in sports is something that will never happen.

Baseball, the commissioner's office, the owners, the players, the players union must do one simple, and basic thing...

They must tell the truth, no matter the consequences, no matter the backlash, no matter what. Tell the truth.

Say it ain't so Alex, Roger, Barry, Sammy...or tell the truth.

The truth, pure and simple. No lawyering up, no union spin. Baseball fans deserve the game be played fairly by each and every single major league ball player.

The record book of Major League Baseball was once treated like the King James Bible...every single word was sacred. Fans could quote every baseball record like they were reading scripture...and on the sixth day, Ty Cobb hit .420. Now, Tyrus Raymond Cobb died in 1961, Babe Ruth passes away in 1948, Mickey Mantle in 1995. These players, and tens of thousands of more - Bench, Aaron, Di Maggio, Feller, Johnson, Musial, Matthewson, Cy Young, Maris, Greenberg, Gehringer, Foxx, Gibson, Ripken, Trammell, Kaline, Matthews - will never, ever have one single hit or pitch questioned because of some kind of anabolic substance in their bodies.

But right now, every baseball player, with or without prejudice, needs to come clean. It's that simple. Barry Bonds, the truth now...Big Mac..it's been long enough, now the truth...Sosa, how many corked bats... Miguel Tejada, tell the truth. Clemens, Petitte, A-Rod, the truth now.

Baseball fans deserve to know about each and every record that has been affected by any player who took any drug that made those records fall because of performance enhancement. Every team,  every player, union official, and the commissioner's office must be on board, and none of the "we had no idea" defense by any party involved. The fans know that the player's union has been protecting the players, and that the owner's have looked the other way as home runs have risen. Now, they need to stand together, as one, and admit the wrongdoing involved in baseball the past 20 years or so.

So, there it is...the truth. Tell the truth. Baseball needs it, and the fans, well, we deserve it.