OH MAN! I GOT AL KALINE! I DON'T BELIEVE IT! DETROIT TIGERS ! MY FAVORITE PLAYER!

Brief moments of agony and ecstasy, they were, those weekly purchases of boyhood idols at 5 cents a pack.

Mystery and majesty enveloped those cards. They connected a young boy in a sleepy farm town to the big city of Detroit and those larger-than-life players who roamed the green expanse of Tiger Stadium.

They were holy cards of a sort for a boy worshipper.

Let's just say it: AL Kaline was my hero. I really did want to be like him. I shouted his name when I hit stones on our gravel road. I still have my chewed-up AL Kaline signature bat to prove it.

Permit me to wonder what a young boy, or girl, feels today when opening a pack of Baseball cards to reveal Alex Rodriguez.

Maybe it's still "OH BOY!" Or maybe it's, "Oh yeah, A-Rod. The guy who admitted using drugs. Wonder if that will up his resale value in the Beckett price guide."

OK, roll your eyes. Here we go, another Baby Boomer lament: Whatever happened to heroes? Who can today's youth look up to? Blah blah blah.

Exactly.

For those of you who have been in monasteries, Rodriguez admitted this week to taking performance-enhancing drugs from 2001 to 2003. The news quickly spread far beyond the game itself. Barack Obama called it "depressing."

Yes indeed, and not just for the reputation of what once was America's game.

It is also depressing that this is not such big news. More fans yawned than gasped. This was just one more episode in the drug-riddled annals of big-league Baseball, and other sports as well.

Example B: champion swimmer Michael Phelps, arguably the world's premier athlete, photographed while smoking marijuana. With one suck of the pipe, Phelps plunged from Olympic medal Goliath to suspended party slacker.

Sadly, their stories do not shock us. We have long since grown numb to such revelations thanks to Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and other drug-pumped athletes and melted-down celebrities.

FYI, these tainted, perhaps fallen heroes are not merely cautionary sports stories. They go to the heart of what faith communities try to teach children about moral behavior.

It's all well and good for youth ministers to point to Jesus, Moses and Muhammad as role models. The lesson is undermined when a kid learns A-Rod's home runs got a little chemical help.

Message to child: Oh, I get it. Real heroes lived long ago; today they get away with what they can.

Of course, plenty of drug-and-scandal-free role models survive. But it's an uphill battle to teach youth good values when their would-be heroes keep falling flat.

"Careful the things you do, children will see and learn," wrote composer Stephen Sondheim.

Message to adults: Careful of the things your children learn from the celebs. It's up to you to teach them true heroism.

Cat quiz

Note to faithful readers: A recent assertion in this column, that there are no cats in the Bible, turns out to be false. I know, you're shocked someone would point this out in West Michigan. But let's see how biblically astute you are by e-mailing me chapter and verse. Hint: It may not be in your Bible.