Sometimes, the punishment really does fit the crime. Just look at the price Nathan Mallett is paying for an ill-advised romp at Cleveland Stadium.

Mallett, by way of introduction, is the drunken idiot was so upset at the way his Cleveland Browns were getting beaten by the Pittsburgh Steelers last month that he ran across the field in protest.

Thanks to a municipal judge and her Solomon-like wisdom, he’s also living proof the American justice system really does work.

Judge Joan Synenberg didn’t just give Mallett a few days in jail for the jaunt that ended badly enough for the 24-year-old when Steelers linebacker James Harrison body-slammed him onto the ground and held him until the cops arrived.

She made him serve his sentence over Super Bowl weekend, and ordered him not to watch the game on television or listen to it on radio while in jail.

If that wasn’t bad enough for a die-hard football fan, Synenberg banned Mallett from attending Browns games in Cleveland or any other city for the next five years.

Think of what might happen if Synenberg had jurisdiction over other things in sports.

Imagine the punishments she could hand out to:

_ Bode Miller, for admitting that he sometimes drinks and skis. Make Miller spend a Saturday night in the bar of any ski lodge in northern America and listening to drunks brag about the spectacular run they made through powder that day. After one throws up on his new Nikes, he’ll never want to drink again.

_ Peyton Manning, for trashing his offensive line after losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Make Manning appear with his linemen in a commercial as excruciatingly painful to watch as the Visa spot Tom Brady made with his protectors. Or have Manning spend an offseason actually working in a grocery store or at a salad bar: Then maybe he’ll stop making ads that mock everyday workers who don’t have $98 million contracts.

(While we’re on the subject of commercials, will someone please make Tiger Woods take a rainy day off? Actually, Woods does take time off _ and lots of it, if you judge by his frequent appearances at the MGM Grand blackjack tables in Las Vegas.)

_ Todd Bertuzzi, for the cheap shot that likely ended Steve Moore’s career and could have ended his life. While Bertuzzi will be skating next month on Canada’s Olympic hockey team, Moore will be trying to figure out ways to pay $160,000 in legal bills he apparently owes Bertuzzi because his civil suit against him was dismissed before trial. Bertuzzi should give Moore the gold medal the Canadian team is likely to win there, and maybe some of that sweet Turin chocolate, too.

_ Ron Artest, for not playing well with others. Artest may feel he’s already been punished enough by the Indianapolis Pacers after foolishly demanding a trade. But how about really rubbing it in and trading him to the Utah Jazz? His hip-hop CD may not do as well in Salt Lake City, but he could always make some more music with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

_ Maurice Clarett and Marcus Vick, for playing badly with guns. Let them both go into a dark alley and scare each other, instead of innocent bystanders. Even better, put them in a cellblock of real tough guys and let them figure out how to run out of danger.

_ Singer R. Kelly, for making a mockery out of the national anthem. Kelly turned it into an R&B song, complete with dancers before the Bernard Hopkins-Jermain Taylor middleweight title fight in Las Vegas last month. At one point, Kelly stopped singing and urged the crowd to ``Clap your hands, y’all.″ Instead, the crowd booed Kelly out of the ring. Sentence Kelly to 24 hours of watching continuous video loops of Roseanne Barr’s own screeching, crotch-grabbing 1990 rendition of the national anthem before a San Diego Padres game.

_ The Vikings, for their X-rated journey on a G-rated Minnesota lake. If Daunte Culpepper, Moe Williams, Bryant McKinnie and Fred Smoot like the water so much let them spend the winter doing what most Minnesotans do _ stand around shivering over a hole on a frozen lake while trying to get equally frozen fish to bite.

_ Major League Baseball, for standing by idly while steroid-fueled bodybuilders made a mockery of the game. You conned a generation, so why not try and make up with it by making up with the next generation? Give kids a reason to like baseball again and let everyone 12 and under into games for free for a season.

_ And, finally, Alex Rodriguez and the Treasury Department for taking way too long to make decisions that shouldn’t be that hard. Rodriguez may have Dominican parents but he was born and raised in the United States. He also plays for a team called the Yankees. If A-Rod has such conflicting emotions, maybe he should sentence himself to foregoing the smoky Manhattan poker rooms and gambling away some of that $250 million he’s making in the Dominican to make himself feel better.

The dunces at the Treasury Department, meanwhile, seem to think it’s 1962 all over again. Countries aren’t kept out of the Olympics for political reasons, and there’s no legitimate reason to keep Cuba from coming to the United States to play in the World Baseball Classic.

Don’t sentence them to anything. Just hope that they finally come to their senses.

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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlbergap.org