The final bell on the first half of the 2006 season will ring on Sunday night and we'll celebrate the All-Star festivities in Pittsburgh with the requisite Home Run Derby. Only to watch the highlight films and check the box scores, you would think we've been viewing such a competition all season long.

I though the home runs were supposed to stop flying? At least that was the conventional thinking after the implementation of the new testing policy and harsher suspensions for offenders.

Entering Friday's games, 20 hitters have already reached 20 home runs. Another 32 players have hit between 15 and 19 homers. That's an awful lot of gopher balls being served up. In fact, home runs are up 8.1% over last season and are flying out of ballparks at the highest rate in the last five years.

Jim Thome and David Ortiz have each hit 29. Albert Pujols has 28, and he missed three weeks of action.  Carl Crawford hit his 13th for the Devil Rays.

For the time being, everybody wins.

Major League Baseball can hold up the list of players, mainly in the minor leagues, who have been suspended for a positive test to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system.

Fans get to see runs scored by the truckload.

And fantasy owners continue to search for viable starting pitching just like real GMs.

I toss it to you to come up with a name for this post-testing world.

For now, I'll stick with Buddy Ball.