Now we won't bore you with another tedious rehash of the Kerrigan-Tonya Harding rivalry, how Harding's practice husband Lefty O'Fool fixed the competition with one across the patella and propelled the sport into ratings-grabbing infamy, or even how Harding is trying to get up a fight with Arturo Gatti on the Who Asked For This cable network.

But we do have some questions. Like, "How can there be a U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame for Kerrigan to enter without the most famous piece of bric-a-brac in the sport's history?'' And, "How could the dingus have evaded the clutches of the eBay crowd?'' And, "Whose bright idea was this, J. Edgar?''

Ours is a society built in considerable part on shameful memorabilia. O.J. Simpson's low-mileage Bronco ... Pete Rose's betting slips ... Lawrence Taylor's Rolodex ... Mark McGwire's andro bottle ... Paris Hilton's SAT ... if someone famous did something nefarious with it, we want it. Hey, two cheese wedges fought over Barry Bonds' 73rd home run ball and ended up spending more than a year making boat payments for lawyers.

And yet, the Louisville Mugger is gone, perhaps melted down into some odd paperweight, wedged up against the back of a refrigerator, or in the trunk of a car waiting for the next B&E opportunity. A waste ... a tragic, outrageous waste.

Why, the more we think of it, the angrier we get.

I mean, who thought this was a good idea? Who couldn't grasp the social significance of the Harding Hardware? Was space so short at Quantico that there wasn't wall space for the dirty dingus mounted on a plaque with the legend, "Nancy Suffered So That Sasha Cohen Could Be Free?''

It makes a body wonder if there wasn't some other business at work here, some sort of evil conspiracy set in motion by the figure skating establishment inside the Beltway to eradicate the symbol of the sport's greatest triumph, to fool people into thinking that figure skating became a staple of sports entertainment on the basis of its own artistic merit.

What do they think we are, morons?

We know the score. We know that the Motor City Leg Waxer made figure skating what it is today -- a sport that once fed a thousand Peanuts On Ice shows and became the 30-ton programming elephant you see before you today. Without it, you have high-speed curling. With it, you have Michelle Kwan's ticket to ride.

Surely this was an item worth preserving, if only for the boys and girls at The History Channel to grind out of a 20-part series. And even if it didn't qualify as a historical artifact, it could still have been used to hit Rose upside the noggin with while we screamed, "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN YOU DIDN'T USE ANY INSIDE INFORMATION WHEN YOU BET ON BASEBALL? DO WE LOOK LIKE THE TURNIP POLICE?''

Instead, we're left with a few grainy shots of Kerrigan screaming "Why? Why?'' while the weapon that launched a thousand double-runners vanishes and is now lost forever. For us and our children, who may some day have to do a school project on The Aluminum Sidewinder, the destruction of this artifact is a great loss. A society that dotes on infamous souvenirs, from John Dillinger's wedding tackle to Sammy Sosa's Batting Practice Bat, will feel the loss of Hell's Own Sand Wedge, for now and years to come.

That is, unless it magically turns up soon, the way those national defense computer discs were found behind that Xerox machine in New Mexico, or in Nicky Hilton's foyer, or in a mechanic's tool box in Ypsilanti, Mich. After all, you can never be completely sure that things that "get'' destroyed, "stay'' destroyed, if you know what we mean, and we think you do.

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