Turned on the television today and saw that Alex Rodriguez pumped some steriods into his body back in 2003, the same year he won the MVP as a member of the Texas Rangers. Saw that the press was having a field day with the water cooler topics that were sure to fly around sports bars and airwaves for the next 3 months.

I saw that Barry Bonds was beginning the next phase of his trial or inquest as to the allegations that he doped while playing in the MLB.

Then I saw that there were new allegations of DNA evidence recovered from needles belonging to Roger Clemens' trainer that proved that the Rocket got shot up with more than a little B-12 whilst a Yankee.

Flipped the page and noticed that Aquaman himself was being dropped from the Wheaties box after pictures "surfaced" with him wearing lambchops and smoking dope from a 3 footer. He got banned for 3 months from swimming and will likely not hear the end of this until he retires.

Lance Armstrong accused of doping. Back page of last year's news.

I'm sitting here staring at the biographies of some of the most prolific athletes of the last ten years...hell, the most prolific athletes in their respective sports ever, and they all have something dreadfully wrong with them in common. They are all human.

Humans cheat. On their taxes, wives, husbands, at stop signs, when they get too much change from a lazy cashier, and in sports. Humans make mistakes. They believe people when they tell them that their actions won't have consequences. They listen to people that give bad advice, and ignore detractors that offer the opposing sentiment. Human beings are flawed, and can be downright devious. But most of the time, making a mistake only requires an apology for people to rightly feel empathy and let them off the hook.

Phelps did the right thing. He said he was sorry, young, eager to have fun, and negligent. He is forgiven in my book. Lots of people continue to throw stones at him, and there will be more fallout than he deserves, even if this was the only time he ever smoked weed (it wasn't, and we all know it). But he did what nobody else in this blog has done (yet) and he manned up to his actions. Now, the irrefutable proof of holding a bong in a really clear picture will force you to "tell the truth" and admit mistakes. So I suppose that if there were picture out there with Barry injecting Roger in the hip with a day-glo colored substance that we could universally ID as 'roids, we'd have gotten a quick apology from them, too. Unfortunately in this case, we live in America, and we have a constitution that protects you from having to admit you made a mistake in your life until a team of three hundred lawyers get paid 20 million dollars to sniff out irrefutable proof that it was true. Damn that freedom thing.

Sadly, I wish certain things were exempt from that protection. I can't name a single person that thinks that Bonds, Clemens, Armstrong, Sosa, Palmiero, Phelps, or A-Rod are perfect. Each of them has most likely done something in their professional or personal life that they are not proud of or that they wish they could take back. But since admitting freely their mistakes and laying themselves before the mercy of the court of public opinion would entail such a brutal beating from the very fans they worked so hard to gain adoration from, they listen to their lawyers. They go in to hiding. They let the chips fall where they may. They basically hope it will go away and someone else will make a bigger mistake that will overshadow their own (see: Phelps' sigh of relief after A-Rod's allegations made the headlines).

I would love, just once, for an athlete to take this course after it comes up...

Call a press conference and gather your friends and family there. Look into the camera and occasionally back at your F and F, and say, "I goofed that up, big time. I made a mistake, and I went with peer pressure and I did the wrong thing. I volunteer for mandatory testing so that it won't happen again. I failed you."

Then, and only then, let the chips fall.

I think I'd stand up and clap if A-Rod did that this week. I'll bet you his salary that I'll see a lot more of his attorney than of him.

Postscript:
"A-Roid" and "Alex Roidriguez" have been Trademarked by me, years ago. The fee for using either nickname in conversation, print or on the air will result in me sending you a bill for $10,000 American. You can talk to my attorney if you need proof.