MARK EMMONS Is all of sports juiced?

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- On Sept. 17, Barry Bonds hit a pitch that barely cleared the SBC Park left-field wall, landing about two rows deep in the bleachers.
"Unreal," Bonds said afterward about hitting his milestone 700th homer.
Unreal, indeed. Would that ball have traveled the extra 10 or so feet needed to leave the field if Bonds had never used muscle-building steroids? Or would Bonds even be within striking distance of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron to claim baseball's most glamorous record -- the home run crown?
Questions like these represent the fallout from Bonds' leaked grand-jury testimony, in which he admitted using "clear" and "cream" substances from BALCO Laboratories -- apparently the designer steroids at the heart of the scandal.
Whether he knowingly took steroids -- and he says he didn't -- the debate is officially over about if Bonds ever used performance-enhancing drugs. But the debate is only beginning about what this means for Bonds' legacy as well as baseball's tarnished image.
For that matter, all of sport should be in for a round of deep soul-searching.
"Anybody who always thought Bonds took steroids will now feel vindicated," said Gary Gillette, editor of the Baseball Encyclopedia. "People who held out hope that Bonds wasn't using probably feel betrayed. And the black eye that baseball already had gotten will come out from under the makeup."
Paying attention?Don't be surprised
But Gillette said none of this should surprise anybody who has been paying attention. And he's right.
The BALCO scandal has been percolating for more than a year. All the revelations that have come crawling out from beneath the rock in recent days -- either by Victor Conte Jr.'s look-at-me media tactics or the testimony leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle -- are less shocking than sad confirmation of the obvious.
Elite athletes will do whatever it takes to become elite athletes. And they'll continue doing whatever it takes to remain at that level.
Here's another tough question: Do we really care?
"The dirty little secret is there's a substantial segment of the public that continues to state in opinion polls that it doesn't care," said John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor and authority on doping. "We continue to set attendance records at the parks. People are much more complacent about drug use than it's acceptable to admit."
In our heart of hearts, do we mind if a little extra chemistry is required to create those extraordinary athletic feats that entertain us?
Yet the BALCO disclosures last week still sent tremors through the sports world. Conte's claims that former sprint darling Marion Jones used drugs might cost her the five medals she won at the Sydney Olympics. Former Raider Bill Romanowski, among others, was implicated.
Real bombshellscame in baseball
But most Americans pay scant attention to track and field, and Romanowski is retired. The real bombshells came in baseball because they involve some of the biggest names in a game that remains the national pastime. You know, mom, apple pie and baseball.
And now steroids.
Earlier this fall, Gary Sheffield admitted that he took BALCO'S drugs, the clear and the cream, at the behest of Bonds but that he didn't know they were steroids.
Then came last week's revelations. Brothers Jason and Jeremy Giambi reportedly told the BALCO grand jury that they used a variety of drugs provided by Greg Anderson, Bonds' trainer. Jason admitted taking a pharmacy's worth of substances, using the clear, the cream and testosterone and injecting growth hormone into his stomach.
But the testimony of Bonds -- the man whose power numbers and muscle size have increased late in his career -- created the most shock waves.
Remember, he wasshown documents
Prosecutors confronted the slugger with documents alleging that he used a cocktail of drugs -- steroids, growth hormone, insulin and more -- dating to his record-setting season of 73 home runs in 2001. Bonds did say he took the cream and the clear but that his personal trainer said they were just flaxseed oil and healing balm for arthritis.
That admission flies in the face of his continued and defiant public denials that he ever used steroids. But at the very least, he was informed last December by prosecutors in the grand jury room that he had used steroids.
It's also strange that an athlete who takes an almost religious care of his body wouldn't know exactly what substances he was putting into his body.
But Bonds still has defenders who believe it's unfair to label him as a cheating athlete.
"He says he was not aware that he was using steroids, and I'm inclined to believe him," said John Thorn, co-author of the Total Baseball encyclopedia. "You can call me naive. But if he did indeed take these, it isn't any different than Mark McGwire taking androstenedione. They took these substances to give relief to a body that's subject to a lot of wear, not to add power."
Hoberman also invokes the name of McGwire, but in a different context. He notes that baseball had a chance to begin dealing with performance-enhancing substances in 1998, when McGwire was using the steroid precursor andro -- which was then legal -- during his 70 home-run season. Instead, Hoberman said, Commissioner Bud Selig and the Baseball Players Association has stuck its collective head in the sand.
"There's been a crisis for six years and remarkably little has actually been done about it," Hoberman said.
He also doubts that even if Bonds "is nailed to the wall" there will be any real attitude change about drugs in high-level athletics.
"There are so many branches of elite sports that are so riddled with drug use, that the idea of turning this around on the basis of moral objections is unrealistic," he said. "Famous people are going to get busted, but there won't be revolutionary charge. You have to figure out a way to change the motivations in elite sport."
Is the game headingtoward a turning point?
That said, the game may be heading toward a tipping point. When do fans start to wonder: Is there anybody on the field who's not juicing?
Gillette believes the fans who have come to that conclusion already have given up on the game. But Thorn counters that the recent revelations won't keep spectators away from the ballpark.
"We have different rules of morality for our cultural superstars," he said.
In the BALCO scandal, it's hard to find anything resembling morality. It has sapped the joy from the games and pulled back the curtain, revealing to us the unseemly way that some of the world's best athletes were created.
Now it's difficult to look at any great athlete or accomplishment without suspicion.
"It's like you're dreaming, and not dreaming," Bonds said the night he hit No. 700, describing his emotions after the home run.
BALCO is turning that dream into a nightmare.
XMark Emmons is a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News.