Others just wanted to get a look at the names.

From the White House to the halls of Congress to the locker rooms of the NFL, plenty of folks reacted to Thursday's release of the Mitchell Report, the most compelling look yet at baseball's shameful side.

"Yeah, I heard a few names on the list," New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan said.

His reaction?

"Wow."

Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds were among those called out in the report on performance-enhancing drugs infiltrating the national pastime, a problem baseball has long addressed with its head in the sand but now vows to attack with a vengeance.

Curt Schilling called on any offending players to own up to their mistakes, from the biggest stars to the most obscure backups, from those who once used steroids to those who still use human growth hormone because it can't be detected in baseball's current testing system.

"Look, if you ordered HGH or steroids, in your name, and there is documentation to prove that you did, please do us all a favor and admit you made a mistake and move on," the Red Sox pitcher wrote on his blog, 38pitches.com. "This is a pretty damn forgiving country. We are all about giving people second chances. The quicker anyone guilty is accountable, the quicker we can all move on and hopefully make this thing go away, and fix what needs to be fixed."

Republican presidential candidate John McCain accused the players' association of dragging its heels in the fight against doping.

"It's time now for the players' union to step forward and say 'OK, we'll save the game and the reputation of the game and cooperate with meaningful, tough punishments, and testing procedures so that we can prevent this from ever happening again,'" he said.

Across party lines, another presidential candidate said the report should be a catalyst for baseball to adopt stricter testing and tougher penalties, measures that truly will take a bite out of performance enhancers.

"We've been down this road before," said Biden, who sponsored a 1990 law that made steroid trafficking illegal. "This report makes clear that baseball's existing drug testing scheme isn't working."

Two congressional committees scheduled hearings, hoping to keep the pressure on baseball to make changes in the wake of perhaps its worst scandal since the 1919 Black Sox threw the World Series.

For now, the sport has a black eye for all to see.

"It is very, very difficult to sit back and see that so many people cheated in the baseball world," said New York Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora. "I don't understand how they weren't caught before now."

Commissioner Bud Selig vowed to do whatever was necessary to catch the drug scofflaws. One researcher said baseball should start by devoting more funding to the effort to stay one step ahead of the cheats.

"I think baseball's making headway, but I'm waiting to see if they're going to put resources into it," said Don Catlin, former head of the UCLA testing lab.

Baseball has given him about $500,000 (with the NFL chipping in, too) to develop a urine test that might detect HGH, but the science has yet to catch up to the problem. Even if it does someday, more-advanced concoctions surely will come along to help athletes get an edge on their competitors.

"The focus today is on growth hormones," Catlin said. "But say we got that contained tomorrow or the next day, there's going to be another one. The question is how to deal with the landscape and all the new substances that come along."

President Bush weighed in on the issue through his spokeswoman, who said he hopes "this report marks the beginning of the end of steroid abuse."

Bush is a big baseball fan who once served as managing partner of the Rangers. Press secretary Dana Perino said he was not aware of any steroid use before he gave up control of the team to run for governor of Texas in 1994.

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, who led the investigation, didn't restrict his findings to those on the field. He also revealed executives being very much aware of suspicious players but keeping those talks behind closed doors, worrying only how a juiced-up player might affect a trade or free-agent signing.

Eric Gagne is one such player, according to Mitchell's probe, coming under additional scrutiny from Boston scouts before he was acquired in a midseason trade this year. On Monday, he finalized a $10 million deal for 2008 to be Milwaukee's closer.

The report details allegations of Gagne receiving two shipments of HGH and once questioning his supplier about how to get air out of a syringe — embarrassing revelations that immediately put his new employer on the defensive.

"Our goal is to field the best team possible based on information we have in hand," Brewers general manager Doug Melvin said in a statement. "While we were disappointed to see information from 2004 related to Eric in the report, we still firmly believe that his addition to the club makes us a much stronger team as we head into the 2008 campaign."

The Detroit Tigers, whose roster includes one of the biggest names in the report, Gary Sheffield, released a statement saying "the eradication of performance-enhancing substances in baseball and protecting the integrity of the game are the ultimate goals of the industry." They didn't mention Sheffield.

The report also named players who've already run afoul of the testing procedures finally put in place just a few years ago.

Ryan Franklin, a reliever with the St. Louis Cardinals, was suspended for 10 games in 2005 after a positive test for anabolic steroids. He denied any wrongdoing at the time, saying "there has to be a flaw in the system."

He wasn't so talkative after his name came up again Thursday other than to say, "I'm not worried."

Others are worried, though they hope Mitchell findings will be the catalyst for significant reform.

"As disappointing as these findings are, this report could signal a turning point for professional baseball," said former commissioner Peter Ueberroth, who now heads the U.S. Olympic Committee.

"This report could represent the beginning of a new era, an era during which the credibility and values of the sport are fully restored."