So, all is forgiven. Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez have taken their teams deep into the playoffs, and no one seems to remember that at the outset of the season both were busted for using performance-enhancing drugs.

Last weekend, Yankee fans were chanting Rodriguez's name, and the same Dodger fans who once booed Barry Bonds for drug use welcomed Ramirez back with open arms after his suspension.

Both men were national pariahs last spring. Ramirez was suspended for the first 50 games of the season. Rodriguez, caught belatedly (aren't they all?) for using steroids years earlier (but not since then, he claimed), faced only the backlash of public opinion.

"There's nothing to do but move forward," Dodger general manager Ned Colletti said at the time of Ramirez's suspension. "We can't dwell on the past."

The problem is that baseball people are always so eager to move forward (especially do-nothing commissioner Bud Selig) that they didn't really understand what is happening until it is too late. Why bring this up now? Because the PED problem is not as simple as ineffective testing, suspending players for a brief time and moving forward.

Consider this: Late last year the results of a Swedish study were released that indicated that athletes benefit from the use of steroids years after they stop taking them even though there are no longer physical traces of the drugs in their system (nothing was said about the hazards also lingering for years, but it seems to follow that that would be the case).

In other words, if this study is correct, Ramirez and Rodriguez — and all the other still-active professional athletes who have used them — are still reaping the benefits of cheating after they stop using steroids. They are still enjoying an advantage over the competition.

To determine the long-term effects of steroid use, Swedish scientists studied muscle samples of power lifters' thighs and shoulders. There were three control groups: (A) power lifters who had previously used anabolic steroids for long periods of time but had stopped using them for years; (B) power lifters who were currently competing and training but not using steroids; (C) power lifters who were taking steroids.