San Jose, Calif. ? Is Barry Bonds about to become a Rose by another name?

There’s still a long way to go, of course, before Bonds suffers anything close to the cursed fate of Pete Rose – banishment from the game and eternal sporting damnation.

A long way to go, after so many years of delaying, denying, ignoring and covering up.

But baseball crossed a major threshold Wednesday, when reports surfaced that former senator George Mitchell would lead a Bud Selig-sanctioned committee to investigate Bonds and other suspected cheats of the steroid era.

We don’t know what powers the Mitchell Committee will be granted over union roadblocks or legal cases that spiraled from the government’s BALCO investigation (Bonds may yet be involved in a few).

We don’t know if Mitchell can or will want to make conclusions about past steroid use without positive tests – and there are no such things for anybody up to 2003, when baseball started testing for steroids (but, even then, not for many other performance-enhancers).

We don’t know if the committee will offer suggestions to Selig or be given the responsibility to hand out suspensions or delete record books. (I hope it does have those powers.)

We don’t know what this committee will do if Bonds passes Babe Ruth while the investigation goes on, or passes Henry Aaron after it is through. We don’t know what happens if Bonds retires before the committee is through or does anything.

We don’t know if Selig and the other owners truly have the stomach for a fearless search for the truth, which might unearth more dirt and chemistry than we can even imagine.

But we know that there will be an investigation, and investigations have a way of going down strange paths (just ask Monica Lewinsky and the Whitewater investigators).

We know that Selig’s legacy is on the line here, and that’s about the only thing that woke him from almost a decade of slumbering while the rampant use of performance-enhancing drugs went on.

We know that Congress has been huffing and puffing on this subject for more than a year, and that the laundry list of details in “Game of Shadows” has made the drumbeat for legislation and punishment more urgent.

We know that Mitchell is a powerful man, we know that powerful men have large egos, and we know Mitchell’s ego probably will not be satisfied unless something interesting is uncovered.

It would be nice if Mitchell weren’t the chairman of the board for Disney, which owns ESPN. The network, as we know, is in business with Bonds on a reality show and caters to his whims throughout its programming schedule.

We don’t know Selig’s intentions, but I think we know that he has set loose something that is out of his control. Maybe Bonds will be exonerated. Maybe other star figures will come crashing down.

And maybe the worst is coming for Bonds, starting now. There’s still a long way to go, but it had to start sometime.