When Jason Giambi steps to bat in opposing ballparks, raucous chants of "B-A-L-C-O!" break out.

As Barry Bonds moves closer to Hank Aaron's career home run record, jokes and Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon-like imitations of his head have become commonplace.

Talk of steroids — or even the suspicion of them — is such a part of the sports landscape that in all the indignation over tainted records and smudged superstars we tend to ignore more horrifying prospects of their abuse.

The more-bizarre-by-the-day tale of the death of World Wrestling Entertainment star Chris Benoit and his family has the potential to change all that.

If the use of steroids played a role in the chilling murders-suicide — and Georgia officials have said it could be weeks before toxicology tests are completed — it will put faces, innocent, tragic ones, on the issue. It will take the specter of the abuse of pharmaceuticals well beyond the playing fields and locker rooms.

Make no mistake about it, fallout from steroid indulgence has already been felt on many levels, including high school Incredible Hulk wannabes. It just hasn't reached a level on consciousness this case has the power to provide.

There is a lot that we don't know about what went so horribly wrong in a Fayetteville, Ga., home over the weekend, leading the performer known as the "Canadian Crippler" to strangle his wife and suffocate their 7-year-old son before taking his own life by hanging.

There are some things we may never comprehend about Benoit's state of mind as he took the lives of loved ones, placed a Bible near each body and sent text messages. And there are questions about what role, if any, those chairs to the head and accumulated punishment Benoit absorbed in his ring career, might have contributed.

But professional wrestling is an industry plagued by early deaths and not regulated by governments as tightly as boxing. So, disclosures by investigators that a number of prescription drugs, including anabolic steroids, were found in the Benoit home have to make you wonder in ways that even the WWE's most strident spin doctors can't shake. Associated Press reports that an Albany N.Y. district attorney lists Benoit as a client of a Florida-based company tied to an investigation of sales of illegal steroids invites speculation.

Up to now some of the most visible steroid tragedies have been in the form of tarnished reputations and ruined careers. It would be scary if the Benoit case took it to a more grisly level.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.