Summer Games

The sporting world struggles to play through a season of sin

Midsummer is supposed to be a quiet time in sports--the lazy hammock suspended between the end of basketball and the start of football. In baseball the pennant races are still at a gentle trot, supporting the fans' antique dream of sport as a refuge from front-page reality.

Not this year. Big stars wear the stink of scandal, and the commissioners of the major sports leagues are fuming or squirming in public. These gray men in suits are a sorry stand-in for the boys of summer.

One controversy has been long brewing. Barry Bonds will surely overtake Hank Aaron's cherished record of...

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