Slugger Jose Canseco's book helped make steroids the biggest issue in baseball. Rick Stewart/Getty Images

Sometimes, as I reflect on steroids, I think it is nothing more than the last gasp of the excesses of the '90s. Just the athletic version of the dot-com run-up. Both, after all, were about hitting home runs day after day and believing that the bubble would never burst.

Other times, taking the longer view, it seems to me that the athletes who were blown up by steroids star in our modern version of Greek mythology. From Arnold Schwarzenegger on down to Jose Canseco, aren't these brawny creatures our Minotaurs, our 20th-century half-men, half-bulls, swaggering around and about us mere mortals?

But I'm not here to talk about the past.

It isn't just the chemicals and the syringes that pour forth from some modern Pandora's Box. Nowadays, we're used to spectacular miracles of technology, but steroids strike of antiquity -- witches' brew. Why, steroids seem as magic as all those fantastic elixirs of lore, which, with but one taste, could make us wiser, lovelier, stronger. Drink this, my pretty. When you think about it, enhancing drugs are really our connection with fairy tales. And we've all been raised on fairy tales. No wonder steroids are so seductive. I suspect once you've been a hero you are more susceptible to drink deeply of whatever it takes to make you more of one.

Oh, what business Ponce de Leon could drum up in the Grapefruit League.

But I'm not here to talk about the past.

Always, too, it seemed as if so many of the boldest Greek heroes were not satisfied, but were forever seeking to become gods themselves. After all, the gods up there on Mount Olympus were a smug bunch, easily distracted. So it has been these past few years. Selig, the god of parity and sanctimony, and Fehr, the god of privacy and enabling, both looking the other way, allowing our diamond heroes the opportunity to think they could ascend to an even higher status. The poor fools.

Oh, what a field day Homer would have if only he could get his card in the Baseball Writers of America.

But I'm not here to talk about the past.

The preening members of the congressional subcommittee, of course, were our harpies -- and good for them. There were those media defenders of our national pastime who rushed to excoriate the Representatives, pointing out -- exclusive! stop the presses! -- that politicians actually have egos and enjoy a televised spotlight. But as nasty and haughty as harpies can be, they serve a purpose. For all their vain glory, our duly elected harpies brought attention to the issue of steroids as never before. They made us lowly citizens in the agora mall see so very clearly that when heroes indulge in modern magic it is not just their records we have to worry about. It is our trust, our mythology. And it is our children, too.

But I don't want to talk about the past.