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I'm taking a wild guess now that it was one thing when a known horse's ass like Jose Canseco popped off about steroid use, as he did last week when he revealed he planned to write a tell-all book. (It may be forgotten now, but Canseco was first accused of steroiding back in the early 1990s, by Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post - an accusation for which Boswell was roasted considerably, at the time.) But it may be something else when a player who didn't have Canseco's reputation as an ass (though Caminiti's drug revelations of last fall - and note his commentary about depression being a side-effect of his steroid use: could that not have prodded him to take at least some comfort in other drug abuse? - comment that he wouldn't say no to someone else deciding to use them may alter that somewhat) speaks up and speaks out.

And without once trying to undermine the severity of this issue, I would first remind my friends and observers here that, before there comes a smashing tidal wave of moralistic outrage, let's remind ourselves that baseball isn't the first professional sport bedeviled by the steroid question and it will not be the last. Anyone who thinks now to single out baseball as a hotbed of altered statehood should not be taken seriously on this issue.

Points to bear in mind:

1) You can bulk up to the Incredible Hulk's dimensions but if you didn't have the skills to begin with, the roids ain't going to help you now. (And, if anything, it seems that the more the roids are brought into a player's routine, the less agile, dextrous, coordinated in skill and execution he might become - consider Mr. Canseco, for one notorious example: As much as his having his head far enough up his ass that he couldn't see the moonlight without moving his tongue to one side, injuries likely prevented him from fully consummating what should likely have been a Hall of Fame career: How much of a factor might steroid use prove to have been in those injuries?)

2) Before anyone starts yammering about the single-season home run records being smashed to smithereens en masse, let us remember that the 60-homer plateau has been crossed six times beginning in 1998...by three (count 'em) players.

3) Baseball's offence explosion began at least a decade ago and was caused predominantly by a) the newer retroparks, mostly, being hitter-friendlier (Camden Yards, which all but started the trend, is a notable exception); b) a trend taking hold well enough before the 1990s of pitchers having the inside part of the plate taken away from them (by arbitrary arbiters and by batters ready to open cans of whoop-ass on the field if a pitcher dared to pitch inside) - no less than Greg Maddux has said (to Bill James, for the revised Historical Baseball Abstract) that within a very short time of his coming into the league (Maddux first made the Show in 1986, as a Cub) he noticed hitters crowding the plate and daring pitchers to try coming inside with remarkable impunity; and c) a baseball establishment which thought, in its infinite unwisdom, that for myriad reasons the game would die if the offence wasn't jacked up. (Interestingly enough, the offencive explosion seems this season to be abating somewhat, while the pitchers seem to be taking the inside part of the plate back.) You wonder: Could it really have been that surprising that at least some players, sensing the pressure implied by the very conscious bending of the game toward more and more offence, would have been willing to try anything to get in on the action, especially since (Caminiti notes this) it became a question of economic as well as athletic competitiveness in their minds?

That said, we may agree on this much: Steroids ought to have no place in the Old Ball Game; if the Players Association would like to reclaim the high ground by perception (and throw the owners for a glorious loop), it would be a magnificent gesture if they threw down the gauntlet and demanded - for the sake of their clientele's reputations and integrity - that a reasonable steroid testing program be put into place (much as is in place regarding other drugs); and, the government should stay the hell out of it and give baseball a chance to clean up its own act. (That third was for any and all eavesdropping nannygoats to whom there is nothing beyond the purview of the State.)

Remember: Jose Canseco aside (and he has perhaps as much credibility as Bill Clinton), no one of good enough repute is suggesting that every last baseball player in the majors is doing the roids - any more than people with brains in their heads didn't suggest that every last player in the NFL was using them when the question hit the NFL, or the college football ranks. But if Caminiti is right and maybe half have been doing so, it ought to alarm everyone who loves the game as deeply as I do and believes that baseball at its best is a game of unchallengeable and unsurmountable athletic artistry, a game that speaks volumes (and inspires just as many) and takes a grip upon the imagination of its devotees to deeper extents than any other game in America; indeed, a game which enacts a grand and embracing metaphor enunciated best by its shortest-serving but perhaps finest commissioner: Baseball teaches that, long as you travel and far as you roam, the purpose is to get back home, back to where the others are. A game such as that should have no room for this sort of business, but being played by human beings with all the flaws and weaknesses which are endemic in mere humans, there was probably bound to be something of this sort occurring even in the Great and Glorious Game. And if it gives the game a sufficient enough kick in the ass to get down to cleaning out as much of the roid use as possible, then Sports Illustrated will have done baseball and the nation which has been its cradle a service of perhaps immeasurable depth.

And, if that doesn't work, maybe some pitchers really should think about dialing 1-800-GAYLORD and getting a little help with meeting those great expectorations. There's nothing more likely to shave some points off a batting average than a case of what Boswell called hitter hydrophobia (translation: spitter on the brain). I think baseball would be better off if steroids were banned but the spitter was legalised. Oops! Baseball hasn't yet managed to put a steroid-testing program into place, but God help you if someone thinks you're throwing what George Bamberger liked to call the Staten Island sinker...

Before anyone starts yammering about the single-season home run records being smashed to smithereens en masse, let us remember that the 60-homer plateau has been crossed six times beginning in 1998...by three (count 'em) players.

Steroids or better training techniques have a lot to do with it, but there must be immense pressure for fringe players to do soething or get shipped out.

Why doesn't MLB just start testing the way the NFL does?

I almost forgot to BUMP my basic baseball list!

"I've made a ton of mistakes," admitted Caminiti, who is also a recovering alcoholic. "I don't think using steroids is one of them."

Yeah, an alcoholic is a good judge of his self-abuse - NOT. He's made a ton of mistakes and continues to make them because he is MISTAKEN about a whole lot of things.
For every artificially muscular clothed athlete image we see on TV the public needs to picture the shrunken genitals and laugh. What a hideous deal with the devil these body worshippers strike when they inject steroids.

You can bulk up to the Incredible Hulk's dimensions but if you didn't have the skills to begin with, the roids ain't going to help you now.

Yes and no. Of course, if you are not gifted in the speed and hand-eye coordination to begin with, steroids will not make a horse-drawn carriage into a sports car.

But in my non-PHD opinion I would maintain that they do help you hit a ball. Many steroids, in addition to building strength and power, also stimulate the central nervous system. As any educated athlete will tell you, the central nervous system enables athletes to run fast, swing fast, etc. That would make it easier to hit ball. Possibly it might make it easier to "see" a ball as well. Surely it would make a fast player very fast, and a good hitter will good bat speed a superb hitter with blinding bat speed.

It would also enable guys to keep hitting as hard in September as they do in April, and possibly make it easier for their bodies to "remember" the proper swing technique, as they could practice more without getting tired.

Caminiti was incredibly foolish in his administration of steroids. Apparently he took them for several months straight without a break. Only an unsupervised athlete would do such a thing. Athletes cycle now - several weeks on, several weeks off, to keep their endocrine system from collapsing under the use of exogenous hormone. Their are also medications that can help.

Even with all this, you can still bump into serious problems long-term.