Steroids, Schmeroids.

• Author: Durst, Will
• Position: Off the Map

Oh, for crum's sake, settle down people. You've inflated this whole steroids thing into a national obsession. An Al Qaeda trick designed to devastate democracy from within. No. That's not it. It's just athletes trying to beat the strict imperatives of Father Time's over/under. The average Major League Baseball career is 5.6 years long. So, if you plan on making it, better start today. And be willing to do whatever it takes. Especially after Marvin Bernard and Fernando Tatis start going long.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This unhealthy obsession has all the earmarks of payback. Face it: Your average baseball writer is smarter than your average ball player. Better educated. Reads more books. Some without pictures in them. Watches PBS. On purpose.

Try to remember how star athletes got treated back in high school. Now multiply that by a gazillion, and substitute free money for test answers and sculpted siliconed strippers for cheerleaders. Pampered their entire lives, these guys never possess a single second's doubt as to whose existence is more exalted. Theirs. Which is why the girls, the money, the agents, the money, the fame, and the money all seek them out. For 5.6 years and beyond.

Because these grown boys are the inheritors of Mount Olympus, they are given tacit permission to treat the pesky inquisitive, know-it-all, four-eyed, eight-year-old-Taurus-driving scribes like spit. And they do. Mocking them. Loudly. In an often less than delicate jocular way. In front of the whole locker room. And pretty much do everything in their power to make the sportswriters' jobs harder. Not all of them. Not all the time. And not necessarily intentionally. But one guy, once, accidentally, is all it takes to trigger a long dormant stereotype from the formative days of Wedgie City South's class.

With steroids, however, the worm has not only turned but grown teeth and is threatening to chew up the record book and the Hall of Fame. How else to explain the...