Little Fish, Big Fish

"It's because they're Dominicans," Toño said.

Neither of us is a baseball fan, but we understood how travelers from such a sports-enraptured nation felt.

Twenty years ago, Toño and I were enthralled by the exploits of Italian bicycling star Francesco Moser. He had been known for winning the difficult Paris-Roubaix race over cobbles, in the rain. In 1984, Moser became a demigod in the sport by traveling to high-altitude Mexico City to break the hour record, cycling's most prestigious timed event. The next year I moved there and caught Moser mania. Toño and I bought Moser-brand racing bicycles with his 51.151 km record engraved in the fork crown. Sometimes when it was raining I would seek out potholed roads, tilt my head to the side to shield one eye from water like Moser did, and imagine myself the Italian star.

In 1994, at the age of 42, Moser announced he would travel to Mexico City to break the record again. The resulting hysteria compelled an Italian magazine to urge him to stay home. His native country was suffering the humility of corruption trials, the editorial said; if Moser failed, Italy's spirit might never recover. During the race I spoke with a priest who was the Vatican's envoy to sport. He was so excited by the spiritual implications of Moser's attempted comeback that he grew red in the face trying to explain. Moser failed, barely. But his effort inspired me.

Years later, as part of a crackdown on drugs, police seized the computer of Moser's ex-trainer. An Italian sports official broke the omerta code of silence and said that in 1984 an Italian diplomat had smuggled doped blood that Moser injected. In 1994, computer records showed, the cyclist's trainer gave clients EPO, a red-blood-cell-boosting drug that has also turned up in the U.S. government's investigation of Balco.

It's easy to think that U.S. regulators have been more aggressive than Europeans in pursuing corporate financial fraud, while Europeans have done more about drugs in sports, since Americans care more about money and Europeans, culture.

But that's not true, really. For every person who once wanted to emulate Martha Stewart, 10,000 still daydream of being Barry Bonds.

Our national character will benefit if prosecutors go after Barry Bonds as vigorously as they did Martha Stewart.