Brenda Lee is avenged!

Now, if you were born after the Eisenhower Administration, you probably don't even know Eisenhower, let alone Brenda Lee. But sit tight, my little attention-challenged sheep-drones. All will be revealed.

	Brenda Lee sang it 40 years ago. Now Pete Rose and Charlie Francis have been prodded to follow her lyrics and say "I'm sorry."

Brenda Lee had a hit record in the early '60s entitled, "I'm Sorry." It was a turgid little ballad about something or other that required an apology, lasted barely two minutes and made a bunch of dough.

We bring it up now because we have entered the Era Of The Get-Out-Of-Jail Apology, a shining monument to deliberate gullibility and reverse leverage that is more likely than not to make everyone look foolish.

In other words, right up our street.

Apparently Pete Rose can get back into baseball's good graces by acknowledging that he bet on baseball, admit he was wrong in doing so, and then get dressed up for his Hall of Fame induction speech.

And more recently, Charlie Francis, the man who coached the famous/infamous sprinter Ben Johnson, has been told he can again train top athletes if he issues a statement against the use of steroids, human growth hormone and all other performance-enhancing drugs.

Francis testified 14 years ago that he introduced Johnson to steroids to keep up with the competition. He was banned for life by the Canadian track and field federation for his candor as well as his cheating.

	Before Ben Johnson's former coach apologizes for encouraging elite athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs, Charlie Francis should apologize for that outfit.

Since then, he had laid low, although he has recently been spotted helping world-class sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery. This caused some consternation among track folks, although the head of the IAAF, Istvan Gyulai, said Francis could return if he said that he was wrong back in the day.

This is a lot like baseball trying to extract an admission from Rose that he did what we all know he did -- bet on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds.

In fact, this is a whole lot like that, because Francis, by working with Jones and Montgomery, is back in the business already with the highest profile women's sprinter in the world, and the IAAF has minimal leverage to prevent it.

In the same way, baseball commissioner Bud Selig seems to need Rose and the public goodwill he can bring to the game and its high lord sheriff by reinstating him, or at the very least making him eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame.

Thus, it's nice to know that an apology, especially when wrapped around a sledgehammer, can have such a beneficial effect on the hearts of others.

Take, for example, Mike Vanderjagt, the Indianapolis Colts kicker who was caught last week specifying when he should have generalized. In telling an interviewer that he thought his coach, Tony Dungy, and his quarterback, Peyton Manning, might be motivationally challenged, Vanderjagt caught a fair share of heat by opening up the old debate about the message and the messenger.

In other words, kickers should be seen stretching their groin muscles but not heard commenting on their more mesomorphic workmates.

Vanderjagt has since apologized more than once, but Manning has been lukewarm about accepting it, lukewarm being a euphemism for calling Vanderjagt an idiot on national television.

Vanderjagt, though, is the best kicker in football, and the competitive and salary cap implications of kicking him off the team to assuage Dungy and Manning seem more daunting than they did a few days ago.

In other words, we suspect that Vanderjagt (who wouldn't be the best kicker in football if he wasn't getting so much practice at it, if you get our drift) might find that his apology and vow of future silence will go a very long way toward allowing him to keep his job.

At least until he starts shanking 31-yarders.

And of course, LeBron James is probably just an apology and some returned throwback shmata away from being allowed to finish his pre-NBA career. He is bigger, P.R. speaking, than the receipt police at the Ohio State High School Association, and they have come to realize that face first this past weekend.

Clearly, this is a trend worth watching. Francis may be fine, as well, at least as long as Marion Jones doesn't start glowing in the dark, and Rose could win his way back in until he is discovered doubling down on the Cubs against Danny Graves this coming spring.

But in the old days before tactical forgiveness and lawyers who could read the employment laws, people who got kicked out of something stayed kicked out. Shoeless Joe Jackson is still trying without success to be reinstated by baseball, and he has been dead for years.

So it all gets back to Brenda Lee, ultimately. One 40-year-old torchy ballad sung by a woman who could make her voice imitate a strangulated hernia when she needed to explains how the modern sports world works.

And if anyone doesn't like that last characterization of Ms. Lee, well, I'm sorry.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com