Et tu, A-Rod?

For years he's been held high for "doing it right." Let others pour chemicals into their bodies. Baseball great Alex Rodriguez claimed he could compete using his God-given skills and God-given metabolism. One ballplayer said the whole steroid controversy simply showed "what a freak of nature Alex Rodriguez really is."

His talent was enormous. And he boasted in public that it was all natural.

Now this.

Sports Illustrated, using four different sources, reported Rodriguez was on steroids in 2003 when he ran up those monster statistics that would make him the best-paid baseball player in Major League history. On Monday, Rodriguez admitted to using steroids but claimed that hardly invalidates his accomplishments.

In short, there is no joy in Mudville — again.

Still, it's not like these revelations have come as a surprise. Fans have slowly been working their way through the stages of grief over steroid use. There was denial, then outrage and depression. Now, resignation is setting in. Any belief in the purity of professional sports was torn from fans years ago. Now, they content themselves with a diminished sport.

As for Rodriguez, the incident simply calls to mind those other "minor moments" of cheating — the time when he shouted while running past an infielder trying to catch a pop fly or the game when he tried to slap the ball from a glove while being tagged.

Like so many athletes before him, Rodriguez has now become a character, instead of a player with character.

In the end, "It Happens Every Spring" is a classic baseball movie that trades on the freshness of each new season. The movie is about baseball, of course, but it is also about ethics, the will to win and — as the title suggests — the rebirth of youth and optimism.

Now, with the Barry Bonds trial about to begin and Alex Rodriguez on the hot seat for cheating, "it happens every spring" seems to refer to the annual scandals, bickering and sensationalism that cloud the sport every spring training. Again, fans are left to slog on into the season, pining, along with filmmaker Ken Burns, for the glory days of baseball, the days when it truly was "a game."