01:00 AM EST on Thursday, March 9, 2006

So a new book is saying Barry Bonds took steroids, one that's excerpted in this week's Sports Illustrated.

Tell us something we don't know.

It's almost impossible to have followed baseball at even the most rudimentary level for the last decade or so and be surprised at the avalanche of allegations that now surrounds Bonds.

It also comes nearly a year after the Congressional hearings on steroids in baseball, the day when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were backpedaling as if an inside fastball was coming at their heads. Nearly a year after Bonds' bizarre interview last April when in between leveling bombs at the media he essentially said he was done, as if we were watching a therapy session, the imminent fall of an American sports icon.

It was all there a year ago, Bonds on the ropes, no longer able to protect himself, no place to run, no place to hide, a man all but defeated, as if sensing the one last punch he knew was coming and defenseless to do anything about it.

This upcoming book is simply the knockout punch.

For it's hard to see Bonds surviving this. There are too many allegations, too much grand jury testimony that will be in the book, too much of a paper trail from the Balco investigation. It's already the biggest sports story in the country and the book hasn't even come out yet.

But is anyone surprised?

Only those who have spent the last decade or so living on some other planet.

This was the culture of baseball in the '90s, where too many players dramatically changed their body types in the offseason, baseballs started disappearing over outfield fences at record rates, and everyone said it's just weak pitching and small ballparks, wink, wink. This was the culture, and in many ways it was no different than track and field, or football, or any other sport where performance-enhancing drugs were floating around on the periphery then, all too available, like beer at a frat party. One more drug in a society that seemingly runs on them.

"You wonder about the stats," Orioles manager Sam Perlozzo told the Associated Press. "But you don't know how many did it. Maybe everyone did."

And that's the rub.

In a game where stats are sacred, a game where the present and past always seem to be on the same scorecard, too many of the most revered stats in the game are now tainted. Bonds. McGwire. Sosa. Rafael Palmerio. Jose Canseco. Jason Giambi.

How many of their career stats would you consider pure?

And how many others are out there who so far have skated through this, fortunate enough not to have appeared before a Congressional hearing or be part of a grand jury investigation?

That's the sad thing here, even more than the fact Bonds, the all-time holder of the single-season home run record and the man in pursuit of Hank Aaron's career home run record, now is in the cross hairs of the game's biggest scandal since the 1919 Black Sox. We now have a taint on too many performances over the last 15 years or so.

That is the pricetag for Major League Baseball not banning performance-enhancing drugs until after the 2002 season. This is the pricetag for the Players Association fighting the testing for steroids for years. This is the pricetag for all of us -- fans and media alike -- not dealing with an issue that now taints the game's sacred records.

Baseball's worst nightmare.

One that should have been dealt with a long time ago.

It wasn't, though.

Maybe it was because back there in the summer of 1998 everyone loved McGwire and Sosa, loved the balls flying out of parks on summer nights. Maybe it was the fact that interest in the game was as high as a McGwire home run, everyone lovin' the long ball, bringing people through the turnstiles.

Whatever the reason, no one wanted to deal with the obvious. No matter that some of the people hitting prodigious home runs came to resemble cartoon figures, with their WWE bodies. The people who ran baseball did nothing, because back then it wasn't really in their best interest to do anything about it.

It's almost beyond belief.

So much of this was avoidable. So much of this is such an indictment on the people who have run the game for the last couple of decades, their lack of leadership, their flawed stewardship, their misunderstanding of the fact that if sports don't have integrity, then it's all professional wrestling, nothing more than a show.

For now we have the biggest name in the game right in the eye of the storm, allegations that he took steroids, like some kids poppin' M&Ms when their parents weren't looking.

And the saddest thing?

No one seems real surprised.