Sorry you had to pay $35, Neile, to correct something that didn't need correcting. Shani Davis was the first black athlete to win an individual gold medal. Being the first black athlete to win a gold medal was never the issue - the issue was whether he was the first black american, or first black of any nationality to win individual gold. Glad Costas owned up to the mistake.

I guess I'm more intrigued about an angle to this that nobody seems to be talking about - how the incentive to "cheat" is actually created by us, the fans...the very same people who turn around and ride moral highhorses anytime someone gets caught.

In a sporting world where the gap in skills between being a pro and a minor leaguer is quite minimal, and the gap between being an everyday player and a superstar is even narrower, the incentive to use whatever method possible to give yourself the slightest of edges is enormous. A player who doesn't perform will be ridden out of town by the fans - booed in their own park. But what if the only way for that player to perform is to take a little something extra? Won't that make the fans happy? Aren't they there to see the booming home runs?

It just always makes me sick to hear fans bitch and moan about particular players being bums, lowlifes, losers because they don't quite perform up to snuff. Then, when a player decides to do something to allow himself to perform up to snuff, the fans just as quickly turn their back and say you did it in a morally reprehensible manner.

The size of the money and media coverage of today's sporting world has placed ridiculous amounts of pressure on the athletes to perform. The "golden age" of baseball that has been alluded to here and other places, when it was a game, was a vastly different time. A time when pros made barely more than average white-collar workers - when some still held down jobs in the off season. A time when media coverage was limited to the local paper. A time when athletes could walk down the street unnoticed, because they didn't look like genetically engineered freaks.

We created this mess...to be outraged by it is the highest form of hypocrisy.

To say that McGwire and Sosa are ok because they haven't been caught, and to say that this book definitively "catches" Bonds and thus his records should be erased, misses the point entirely.

You cannot ban Bonds from the Hall of Fame for using performance-enhancing substances that were not banned by the league at the time. You act like Bonds was the only one doing this - how many pitchers do you think did some form of juice? How many other hitters? We don't know, and we'll never know...but one thing we can all agree on is that the number is greater than 1. The reason people like Matt Lawton, who recently tested positive for steroids, don't get books written about them is because they're people like Matt Lawton. I can guarantee if a Bonds-esque investigation was launched into every major leaguer who stepped on the field from '97 - present, the results would be staggering.

Then what would we do?

On a similar note, should we ban all of the inductees into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame who took acid to write songs? It's certainly illegal, and certainly performance-enhancing. What's that you say? Rock music is entertainment, while sports are...entertainment?

my post was not to justify or condone the behavior, but just to remind everyone of why these players do what they do. they do it because of the enormous pressures placed on them to succeed, because they're under the microscope, because their every move is scrutinized and argued over talk radio waves. i'm not saying it's right, or that i respect it...i'm just saying that's why it is. and yes, enron did what they did because of the enormous pressures to increase performance every quarter of every year, lest your stock take a dive. they are scoundrels for cheating to do it, but it's understandable why they did it.

my post was merely to point out that we have created this atmosphere, so we shouldn't be so shocked and outraged when something like this happens.