10 years ago. How could I have been such an idiot?

Boy, we sure were stupid 10 years ago, weren't we? I struggled with "Naive" and "Stupid', and I finally decided the latter had more impact. Al Quaeda simultaneously bombed 3 African embassies, and our administration lobbed a couple of loose Cruise Missiles.

Problem solved, right?

A kid from Plano Texas was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He survived a germ cell tumor that metastasized to his brain and lungs, in 1996. His cancer treatments included brain and testicular surgery and extensive chemotherapy, and his prognosis was originally poor. Prior to the cancer, he was an unknown professional cyclist ranked 47th in the world. Unknown because in the U.S., no one did, or does now, give a rats-ass about cycling. Europeans do...not us. But suddenly this mediocre competitor nearly dies, and the end result is in 1998 he begins his quest to become the greatest cyclist ever.

And we never once then....nor do we now question...how a man could lose a ball, lose dozens of pounds of muscular tissue, go through the rigors of chemo and radiation, then somehow magically not only increase his international standing 48 places to number 1...he increased it even further by becoming the greatest cyclist ever. Europeans, not only enamored with the sport, but keenly aware of its decades-long history of being the dope and chemical sports factory of the universe, cried "foul" again and again. We here in America heralded him and said little pithy things like, "Hey. He has some really neat yellow wrist-bands."

And then it happened. Baseball - very American and not even the slightest European - found a couple of guys: Mark "I'm not here to talk about the past" McGuire, and Sammy "Sorry. I no speakee dee Englee" Sosa to awake the sleeping hoards unhappy since the labor strike and subsequent cancelled World Series of 1994. We watched in blissful obliviousness a home-run race that turned out in retrospect to make the Black Sox scandal of 1918 akin to your 5th grader leaning over to cheat off her neighbor on a spelling test in comparison. Although never tested, these two gentlemen McGuire (70 home runs) and Sosa (66 home runs) put on a chemically-induced show that took us 7 years to fully understand. In the 2005 Congressional hearings, both Sosa and McGuire forever put themselves in a box that they will find almost impossible to extricate themselves from during future Hall of Fame induction ballots.

These two who seemingly took baseball a notch forward ultimately turned out to take the game backwards 10 steps. Will anyone ever forget those hearings, with Sosa suddenly unable to speak or understand English? An English that sounded just fine when he was making those million dollar Pepsi commercials, by the way. Then there was the upstanding Mr. McGuire, who stated to congressmen repeatedly, "I'm not here to talk about the past," which interestingly enough, was the friggin point of the whole inquiry...to talk about the damn past so we could fix the future!

So we continue to wear our "Livestrong" bracelets, deny the implications - if not the whole act - of 9-11, marvel at the feats of swimmers, football players, runners, and baseball players, the whole while acting as if we didn't see another runner, high-jumper, or diver banned from the upcoming China Olympics because of a positive doping incident, some of them sadly - American athletes.

Well...not me. I can no longer claim my innocence as an excuse. I refuse to acknowledge the 1996-2000 four-time Yankees World Series Championships, when I see in the Mitchell Report 78% of the Yankees roster in those years was implicated in the steroids investigation. You won't find me looking at an amazing athletic feat ever again, without wanting to stand there with a specimen bottle in my hand, saying: "That was awesome, Mr. Ramirez. Now, can I get you to pee in this for me?"

Nope. Not me. You may have fooled me in 1998, but in 2008 I'm a lot smarter than I once was. And it was you athletes who made me that way. So you can continue to Livestrong if you want to.

You're not kidding me.