What would sports pages in the U.S. do without Barry Bonds? The disgraced baseball player was in court and in headlines once again this week when the government released its first evidence in its criminal case against Bonds, alleging that he lied to a federal grand jury.

Not that Bonds is the only villain with a good batting average. As baseball fans know well from the Mitchell report, the December 2007 opus put together by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, now President Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, athletes have been covertly taking expensive and officially banned drugs for years. Many got the drugs illegally - either through their trainers or through online pharmacies.

Some highlights from the Mitchell report:

• In Operation Raw Deal, a federal raid on illegal steroid distribution in September 2007, DEA agents used 143 search warrants to seize huge quantities of steroids sold online. Federal agents noted, with distinct queasiness, that the labs involved in the investigation were "extremely unsanitary" and had "huge amounts of raw materials being mixed in bathtubs and bathroom sinks" in certain instances.

• Not only were drugs being sold without prescriptions, some labs, mostly located in China, were shipping raw steroids, along with instructions on how to form them into pills or inject them into the body. According to the Mitchell report, readers of bodybuilding websites often discussed the best ways of converting raw materials into usable drugs and how to avoid being caught.

• "Rejuvenation centers" promoting a "healthy lifestyle" peddled steroids, human growth hormones and other substances. An investigation that began in 2004 with the New York Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement and led to a 2007 raid on Signature Pharmacy in Orlando, Florida exposed an Internet pharmacy that sold $40 million worth of drugs in 2006 without any in-person doctor consultations.

• Among the pharmacy's clients were professional baseball players Jerry Hairston, Jr., Jay Gibbons (my brother's former favorite player) and Cleveland Indians pitcher Paul Byrd who told reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle that his $25,000 worth of human growth hormone and syringes were for his pituitary gland.

"The Indians, my coaches and [Major League Baseball] have known that I have had a pituitary gland issue for some time," he said, according to the Mitchell report.

Right.

As Bill Veeck, former owner of the Cleveland Indians, once said, "Baseball is the only thing besides the paper clip that hasn't changed."