'Say it ain't so, Joe' pleaded a young boy to baseball great 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson about the 1919 World Series match-fixing scandal that saw the Chicago White Sox infamously renamed the 'Black Sox'.

Jackson was one of eight players accused of throwing the series against the Cincinnati Reds. Although the 'Black Sox' escaped jail, they were still banned despite the team being absolved.

That was 89 years ago, but sports scandals have continued to cast a shameful shadow down the years.

Baseball is once again in the spotlight with record home run holder Barry Bonds facing charges of perjury over allegedly lying to a Grand Jury over steroid abuse.

Although he is trying to have the charges thrown out at a 29 February hearing, he has still been released by his San Francisco Giants team.

Even more shocking are the claims that legendary pitcher Roger Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs.

They have led to dramatic claim and counter-claim at a congressional committee where the 45-year-old Clemens has pleaded his case against his accusor, his former trainer Brian McNamee.

Clemens' lawyer Rusty Hardin said the mere fact he fought to clear his name this way and risked so much — his career, reputation and a possible five years in prison if found guilty of perjury — showed Clemens was not a dope cheat.

"No sane man would ever subject himself to that if he hadn't had to," Hardin said.

Former athletics golden girl Marion Jones lied to federal agents three times over doping and subsequently received a six-month prison sentence.

"I want people to understand that everybody makes mistakes. I truly think that a person's character is determined by their admission of their mistakes and then beyond that, what do I do about it?" said the 32-year-old, who has to return the five medals she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

"How can I change the lives of people? How can I use my story to change the life of a young person?"

One young person who will be very much affected by her imprisonment will be her young son, especially as his father Tim Montgomery faces sentencing in March for cheque fraud.

At one point Jones and Montgomery were the golden couple of the track.

Montgomery once even broke the 100 metres world record which, subsequent to drugs revelations, was taken away from him.

Michael Vick too looked to have a golden future ahead of him before the 27-year-old Atlanta Falcons quarterback was sentenced to 23 months in prison last December for his role in a dog-fighting ring.

However, the sentence was cushioned by the knowledge that he could keep a $20-million bonus agreement with the Falcons.

Recent scandals are not just confined to Europe.

Former French rugby captain Marc Cecillon, capped 46 times between 1988 and 1995, received 20 years for gunning down his wife at a party in 2004.

"My wife worked all day. She didn't come home till late," sobbed the 49-year-old.

"I finished early, I had nothing to do, I was lonely, I needed human contact — so I went to hang out in bars. I was enclosed in a bubble," the former back-row forward explained at his trial in 2006.

Perhaps, though, it was one of his two daughters, 26-year-old Angelique, who summed up the sense of loss when she was permitted to speak at the trial.

"I miss both my parents," she cried to the jury. "I can't wait 15 years. Surely today, he's been punished enough."

AFP