It's like clockwork, seriously ... recently, every year around the Baseball Hall of Fame inductions there is news that A) Bud Selig is or isn't considering lifting the lifetime ban against Pete Rose and B) names from the list of players who tested positive in 2003 are leaked.

As for option A, Pete belongs in the Hall of Fame -- but not in baseball. I mean seriously, he has the most memorabilia in the Hall of Fame, so induction is theoretically academic. Enough of that though, I want to take a look at the steroid list and the potential economic impact on baseball.

Could there be any worse fate for an Olympic level athlete than to be stripped of their statistics and medals? Yes, there could be worse things. Just ask former Olympic track star Marion Jones which is worse, losing your medals or being forced to tell your mother you have to sell her house.

Are these professional quality athletes really so stupid as to believe that if they get pinched for using banned performance enhancing drugs they'll get away with just a slap on the wrist? I don't think it's that simple. I'm sure that Marion Jones knew what she was doing was seriously wrong and I feel certain that she knew if she got busted, the truth would come with a very high price. Now, amid all the investigations and scandal, she's finding out just how high priced skirting the truth can really be.

For her misdeeds, Marion Jones has been required to forfeit all five of her medals from the 2000 summer Olympics and has been told to repay approximately $700,000 of her prize money. All of her standings and statistics beginning at September 1, 2000, shall be red-lined in the record books and her medals from other competitions have been taken away also.

Yesterday, I praised Adam Piatt for his admission of steroid use and efforts to assist former Senator George Mitchell in his efforts to investigate performance enhancing drug use in professional baseball. I wrote that "Hopefully the media will treat him well in light of his revelations as a sign to people in all industries that, no matter how badly you screw up, there is redemption to be found if you do what you can to fix it."

Now, free agent catcher Gary Bennett, who played for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2007, admitted in a phone interview with the Washington Post that he used human growth hormone: "As far as the report is concerned to me, it's accurate... Obviously, it was a stupid decision. It was a mistake. It was something that quite obviously, you regret now. And beyond that, I just don't know."

I would congratulate Bennett for his honesty -- more than a few players are insisting on their complete innocence in spite of strong evidence to the contrary. How are the fans reacting? This is just a small sample, but most of the comments left on the Washington Post blog post were very positive:

Adam Piatt retired from Major League Baseball at the age of 28 in 2004. His career statistics are unimpressive: a lot of time in the minor leagues and a total of just 521 major league at-bats and 16 home runs.

Thursday afternoon marked the first time Piatt has ever made headlines: The Mitchell Report cited Adam Piatt as an admitted steroid user who claimed to have sold performance enhancing drugs to former MVP Miguel Tejada.

Piatt volunteered to provide former Senator George Mitchell with information for his investigation not because he had to, but because he felt it was the right thing to do. Mitchell wrote that "After Radomski's guilty plea was publicly announced, Piatt's lawyer contacted us. We later interviewed Piatt, who voluntarily admitted his use of performance enhancing substances. He accepted full responsibility for his actions and said that he had learned an important life lesson as a result. Piatt should be commended for his candor, for his willingness to admit that he made a mistake, and for accepting responsibility for his actions."

Today, Piatt is a Certified Financial Planner with Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MER) and, if his involvement with the steroids investigation is any indication, he is just the kind of stand-up guy the company needs in its organization to get back on track. His candor and acceptance of responsibility contrasts nicely with the company's last CEO, who went packing with a $160 million severance package after the company reported an $8.4 billion loss on bad subprime investments.

A piece in the News-Press looks at Adam Piatt's confessions, and people who know him have a lot of good things to say about him, in particular his financial planning clients praised his character. Adam Piatt is a model of how every Major League Baseball player should have handled the scandal: admit you messed up, do what you can to make it right, and move on. It is also how corporate executives should handle their owns failures: admit they messed up, do what they can to make it right, and move on. I can only think of a handful of CEOs who operate under that philosophy.

In sports and in business, a willingness to accept responsibility for a mistake and do what you can to make it right is rare -- George Mitchell had a lot of trouble getting athletes to talk to him, but Adam Piatt, a retired journeyman with no particular incentive, spilled his guts and subjected himself to a lot of media coverage because it was the right thing to do.

Hopefully the media will treat him well in light of his revelations as a sign to people in all industries that, no matter how badly you screw up, there is redemption to be found if you do what you can to fix it

Yesterday Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants broke baseball's most hallowed record, the career home run mark held for the last 80+ years by only two people; Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. When the dust cleared from the scramble for the ball, Matt Murphy, a 22-year-old from Queens, New York, was holding the prize. The value of Bonds' home run ball is estimated at $400,000 and up.

The value to me: $0. He, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and the other steroid sluggers have given the grand old game a black eye that taints every player's accomplishments.

If someone is dumb enough to fork over big bucks for this tainted trophy, I'd like to offer them a selection of other treasures, such as --

• Ken Lay's Bible
• Floyd Landis' pee cup
• Rosie Ruiz's running shoes
• Uri Geller's spoon
• Frank Abagnale's pilot wings
• Milli Vanilli's musical charts
• Jayson Blair's chair from the NYT

And a share in a surefire scheme I have cooking with this guy in Nigeria who has to move some money out of the country discretely.

On second thought, perhaps the ball should be given back to Mr. Steroid. Then he'd at least have one larger than a peanut.

World Wrestling Entertainment (NYSE: WWE) issued a statement that sheds no light on why Chris Benoit murdered his wife and son before killing himself. The statement suggests that in Benoit's last drug test in April 2007, he tested negative for anabolic steroids and testosterone. And that today's toxicology report suggests he took testosterone after the April 2007 drug test.

This statement is at odds with an AP report which claims that Benoit's body contained 10 times the normal level of testosterone, as well as the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and the painkiller hydrocodone. The testosterone, a synthetic version of the primary male sex hormone, is considered an anabolic steroid.

This statement raises more questions than it answers: