Soccer, steroids and two great non-sports stories

I'm not a huge soccer guy, but I'm hoping to do have a considerable amount of World Cup links here as the summer goes on.

The Miami Herald has a good piece on the concerns about racism in soccer. It included this passage:

...during the Cup, which is expected to draw 32 billion TV viewers...
Is that a typo? Or are all 6 billion residents of the world expected to watch 5.17 games each. Either way I'm not buying it.

Gordon Edes has a funny little baseball piece after vactioning in Germany.

David Whitley on the Game of Shadows writers facing a grand jury.

I have a couple of non-sports related stories too good to ignore.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has a series about hospitals that dealt with Katrina. They described the series as:
Through Hell and High Water,” a serial narrative told in 22 daily chapters, reveals what happened inside two hospitals, one private and one public, during the days after the levees broke in New Orleans.

The LA Times has a two-part series on a polygamous sect that controls a town in Utah. Part 1 and Part 2.