THE STEROID SCANDAL SI Writers • CNNMoney: Players' health should be priority • Donovan: Yankees in middle of storm again • Verducci: This problem won't go away • Taylor: Players should stand up to union • Layden: BALCO case puts stars at risk • Donovan: Baseball's numbers don't add up • Verducci: MLB's drug plan lacks punch • Fish: Steroid sleuth leads charge against THG • SI Special Report: Steroids in baseball • SI Flashback: Caminiti comes clean Latest News • Lawyers reiterate defense of Bonds • Report: Bonds, Giambi, Sheff got steroids • Smoltz calls for tougher drug testing • Kent: Was Babe Ruth on steroids? • BALCO lawyers say Bonds is clean

What's most frightening about the recent discovery of the so-called designer steroid THG is how the United States Anti-Doping Agency came to know of its existence. Earlier this year, a coach sent the agency a used syringe containing the substance.

This is akin to your local police force brilliantly solving a murder because an eyewitness walked into the station house with a video tape of the crime. You just can't depend on that kind of support if you're in any branch of law enforcement.

So the immediate response is to wonder how many other "designer" drugs are out there, substances no tattle-tale has conveniently mailed to the authorities. We have been constantly assured that more money, greater vigilance and improved science have created a situation in which the presence of performance-enhancing drugs is much easier to detect.

Now THG pops up and we have to conclude once again that the robbers are outwitting the cops.

The good news is that almost every sport realizes how vulnerable its game is to doping. Sports as disparate as skiing, rugby and horse racing will all implement testing for THG. Track and field is going to go back and re-examine old urine samples. Midseason or not, the National Football League is rescreening testing samples taken earlier this season.

Per usual, the only ostrich in the bunch is baseball. Major League Baseball continues to hold up Pete Rose as a menace to society because he gambled years ago, but when it comes to the clear and present danger of performance-enhancing drugs, it still doesn't conduct random tests in the offseason and hasn't instituted any penalties for players who test positive in the regular season. Baseball certainly couldn't re-check samples for the simple reason that it tosses them out.

Baseball did institute a trial program last season, wherein if five percent of players (who are stupid enough to get caught, despite knowing approximately when they're going to be tested) came up positive, then . . . then baseball would really start to get serious. Some of the more sensible, concerned players were so upset at this idiotic arrangement that they were going to refuse to take the tests so that the five percent threshold would have to be reached. They were talked out of such a noble protest.

Track and field has been absolutely crushed by drug scandals and rumors, which have caused the public to lose faith in the sport. In the same way, baseball is particularly vulnerable because, like track, it is so much a sport of tradition and standards. There is already suspicion -- undergirded by the confessions of ex-players -- that slugging records put up in recent years were more the product of good chemistry than good hitting. What happens if fans become even more convinced that the numbers in a sport of numbers haven't really been honest? It would be a betrayal, almost a suggestion that we somehow lived several years of our lives without summers.

Doping is to sport very much like terrorism is to nations. It is insidious. OK, there's a lot of bad stuff that's always gone on in sports. But, at the core, we are always drawn to the physical majesty of the young men and women who do wondrous things with their bodies. Sport is art, aesthetics -- tabulated. We are outraged at games that are fixed. Drugs fix bodies. It's the same thing, and we know it.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to SI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. He is a longtime correspondent for HBO's Real Sports and his new novel, An American Summer (Sourcebooks Trade), is available at bookstores everywhere.