The bigger they are, the more fun the fall

	Pete Rose holds several spots on the Great Moments in Sports Schadenfreude Joe Kohen/Getty Images

Before all the hand-wringing over Barry Bonds by the media and fans, we need to admit one important thing: this is fun!

No matter how sad a day this is for baseball, you know at least some people are enjoying seeing Bonds get his comeuppance. Yes, the bigger they are, the more fun it is to watch them fall. And it almost doesn't matter where they've fallen from: it could be from grace like the celebrities on Mr. Blackwell's annual "worst dressed" list, or from ladders like the contestants on America's Funniest Home Videos, or even from cliffs like Wile E. Coyote. Yes, kicking others when they're down is an American tradition, and sports fans are no different.

Remember how much fun it was to watch that ski jumper crash violently at the beginning of the intro to ABC's Wide World of Sports? He embodied "the agony of defeat," and we loved it. If it wasn't that guy's pain that brought you a little guilty pleasure, then it was somebody else's. In fact, from on-field chokes to off-field embarrassments to career implosions, some of the most memorable moments in sports history have been the ones where we, as fans, have taken a little too much amusement from someone's downfall. With that in mind, I present to you Great Moments in Sports Schadenfreude. As a nod to Bonds, I've limited the timeline to the span of his professional career. Let the kicking begin:

June 29, 1988: Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose receives a $29 parking ticket on one of the streets outside of Riverfront Stadium. The street's name? Pete Rose Way.

July 20, 1990: Rose is sentenced to five months in federal prison and fined $50,000 plus back taxes and interest after pleading guilty to two charges of filing false tax reports.

July 25, 1990: After being told by baseball officials to "bring humor to the song," comedian  Roseanne Barr is booed off the field before a Padres home game for butchering the national anthem while spitting and grabbing her crotch.

July 30, 1990: Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is banned from baseball for life by Commissioner Fay Vincent after the Boss pays $40,000 for "dirt" on Dave Winfield. When word of the ban spreads, the crowd at Yankee Stadium erupts into a standing ovation.

Feb. 3, 1993: Reds owner Marge Schott is fined $25,000 and banned from the day-to-day operations of the team for the rest of the season after a string of highly publicized racist and ethnically offensive comments, including praising Adolf Hitler.