It's OK to be annoyed -- outraged even -- but please, please, please don't say you're surprised by the latest display of poor judgment from Major League Baseball.

Members of the Chicago White Sox, their batting average hovering around .230, tried Sunday to end their slump by erecting a sexist shrine to the baseball gods.

There, in the middle of the visiting clubhouse in Toronto, were two unclothed female blow-up dolls, baseball bats arranged in a lewd manner. Signs with crude messages covered their appendages.

White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said it was meant as a joke to loosen up his slump-addled charges. He refused to apologize, all while feigning ignorance over the international fuss created by the display.

After all, the sophomoric peep show was set up in a largely private sanctuary where much of what managers, coaches and players see, say and hear is expected to stay. What happens in the clubhouse, stays in the clubhouse, right?

Except that, for two designated periods on game day, the clubhouse is an extended work space for baseball writers, radio reporters and TV types, women included. They couldn't help but see the so-called shrine, nor could they avoid reporting its existence.

There also are employees from the team's front office -- media relations, traveling secretary, management, women included -- strolling through the clubhouse at most any given time. They couldn't help but see the juvenile display, nor could they avoid wondering about its message.

It's possible the White Sox did this out of naivete. Big league clubhouses aren't known as places of social enlightenment or political correctness.

It's more likely the display was the product of a culture in baseball that seems to tolerate arrogance and ignorance.

Roughly a decade after a reporter noticed a bottle of androstendione in a cubicle belonging to St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire -- the spark that eventually touched off the inferno known as the Steroids Era -- some major league players still think they can get away with questionable behavior on the job.

The reason? Because so many have.

The Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drugs, released late last year, identified scores of current and former players who likely used steroids. A handful have acknowledged their usage and apologized, but many more have refused to be accountable.

Why should they? Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has no plans to punish a single one.

Same goes for the team executives who were singled out by the Mitchell Report for being complicit in the steroid controversy.

There are other examples that define a sense of entitlement in the major leagues. At one end of the spectrum is Philadelphia pitcher Brett Myers, who continued to work even after he was arrested for striking his wife on a Boston street in 2006. At the other end is long-time Atlanta manager Bobby Cox, who fired up his usual postgame cigar at Shea Stadium in New York City earlier this season despite a no-smoking ban at the facility.

Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens -- who define arrogance and ignorance -- might well pay for everyone's sins in this matter. Like those two blow-up dolls, it will be no laughing matter.