"Faith has been broken. Tears must be cried." Mick Jagger, Keith Richards "Wild Horses"

Alex Rodriquez is spending time at strip clubs in Toronto with a woman who isn't his wife.

Did I ask?

Actually, I didn't, but the New York Post thought the rest of us might want to know so they photographed the Yankee third baseman with a young woman in Toronto. Then they photographed ARod's wife leaving with their home with the couple's daughter and few belongings. The actions of the Post reporters remind me not a little of the insurance commercial where the two squirrels run out in front of a car, forcing it to swerve off the road, and then give each other high fives.

Being angry at the New York Post for thrusting Alex Rodriquez personal life into the papers isn't productive. Bears do unspeakable things in the woods and tabloids chase people around with cameras, hoping they will catch something tawdry. It's who they are. It's what they do.

Which leaves us with Alex Rodriquez and Lindsay Lohan. Both are young, both celebrities, both talented. Sadly, both appear bent on doing things that will make their lives more complicated.

Few people think a thing about Lohan's personal life being grist for various entertainment TV shows, magazines, and newspaper columns. She's an actress and, the arguement goes, intrusions into her personal life come with the territory.

We get upset, however, when the personal lives of sports figures are revealed. The angst writers and fans felt over revelations that Mickey Mantle didn't stay in his room on the road drinking milk and writing home to his mom lingered for years even after his death, to the point where a fictionalized account of his non-fiction womanizing was pulled pre-publication earlier this year amidst howls of protest from baseball fans.

The reaction in New York to l'affaire Rodriquez has been instructive. If you check out call-in shows and sports blogs you'll think the average Yankee fan is a Constitutional scholar by day. Peering over their glasses like William F. Buckley, they intone that "Ah, the basic, er, principle here ipso facto, is the presumption that young Mr. Rodriquez is free to walk the streets unencumbered by the purient interests of the press." Or, as one put it, "To be honest, I'm a dog of a guy, and it made me like him a little bit more."

The difference is one of illusion. We understand that Lindsay Lohan's world is make believe, but we lose ourselves in sports. We want that world, the one we turn to when the real one becomes too complicated, to be an arena for heroic men and women to do great deeds. Evidence to the contrary, we believe that our college's football players go to class, our baseball team is steroid free, our basketball stars straight shooters on and off court, and that it all means something.

If you look too closely the flaws in the diamond, and the players on it, become clear. Which is why we want to excuse Rodriquez' forays into high priced strip clubs and low rent off the field behavior or condemn the media for discussing it.

"Say it ain't so, Joe" the kid asked Joe Jackson in 1920. "Say it won't affect your hitting, Alex" is the refrain in 2007.

So here we are. Lindsay Lohan is on the TV in the kitchen with her car smashed up on a curb and Alex Rodriquez is in the den roaming the streets of Toronto with "Miss X".

All I can say is this. Lindsay, Alex, please go home.  The game is about to come on.  I don't have time for you now.  Or later.