Major League Baseball is reportedly considering hitting Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez with a lifetime ban for steroid use. Let's look at some other famous examples of lifetime bans in sports.
434 B.C.: Hypatius of Rhodes is banned from competing in the Olympics after failing to disclose to officials that he is descended from Zeus.
1874: After he is discovered cheating, Pete McGraw is barred from gambling in the Long Branch Saloon. Sentence extended to "life" when McGraw does not survive the gunshot wounds.
1920: Eight Chicago White Sox players are banned for conspiring to throw the 1919 World Series, in what was the least-violent crime committed in Chicago that week.
1927: In Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals, player Billy Coutu assaults a referee, earning him a lifetime suspension. The N.H.L. subsequently adopts a zero-tolerance policy on fighting, handing out over 4,800 lifetime bans over the next 85 years.
1989: Pete Rose banned for applying standard 1980s Wall Street practices to baseball.
1999: Barry Sanders is banned for life from the N.F.L. We haven't been able to find any documentation of this, but there isn't really any other explanation for why he stopped playing.
2003: Basketball quietly bans Michael Jordan in order to prevent him from un-retiring again and further damaging his legacy.
2012: Lance Armstrong is banned from cycling for life, though unlike the vast majority of Americans, the sentence was not self-imposed.