THE POST-MCGWIRE CHEATERS

All those drug cheats won't have Mark McGwire to kick around any
more. Though I wouldn't recommend trying it.

Andro or no, McGwire is built like a brick-you-know-what and those
forearms can swing a fist just as powerfully as they can a bat.

The St. Louis Cardinals slugger, the 70-home run man, announced this
week that he is no longer using androstenedione, the over-the-counter
product that tainted (in some people's minds; not mine) McGwire's
extraordinary long-ball triumphs last season.

In fact, McGwire has been andro-free for the past four months, which
doesn't appear to have slackened his prowess at the plate.

Big Red cracked career No. 500 and 501 last night against San
Diego.

``I thought long and hard about it and I don't like the way it was
portrayed, like I was the endorser of the product, which I wasn't,''
McGwire told reporters.

``I don't like how it's portrayed, but young kids take it because of
me. I don't like that.''

This will no doubt cheer the anti-McGwire faction, a group I equate
with the nicoNazi contingent, such is their zeal in degrading the
slugger's achievement, as if andro - a legal drug in major league
baseball - had helped him make contact with the ball.

It was, after all, the number of home runs that McGwire hit in the '98
campaign that made his a record accomplishment, not the distance of
those parabolas. Intelligence and instinct at the plate are not
factors affected by andro.

However, the McGwire rockets did, inadvertently, provide a handy
crutch for other athletes who were caught with their hands in the
steroid jar. Ben Johnson, for one, had yet another reason to complain
about being unfairly crucified for behaviour which was both legal and
commonplace in other sports.

The most recent of those to wield the McGwire-shield of self-defence
was Steve Vezina, whose positive drug test cost Canada a team gold for
roller hockey at the Pan Am Games.

``Mark McGwire is the best hitter in the National League but he was
proud to say he was taking andro and he was a hero,'' Vezina whinged
last week. ``I take a little bit to help me get ready for ice hockey
and it seems it would be less bad if I robbed a bank.''

Oh, poop.

It wasn't just ``a little bit.'' It was damn near Richard Pryor
freebasing strength; so over-the-top that medical authorities were
staggered by the trace evidence still in Vezina's urine. And McGwire
was hardly ``proud'' of his andro use.

This is like comparing apples and oranges. Or hash brownies and
speedballs.

Frankly, I've become increasingly suspicious about the credibility
quotient in drug testing. This appears an inexact, or befuddled,
science, nowhere near as irrefutable as DNA testing.

Perhaps the ingenuity of the druggies too rapidly outpaces the testing
capability of the sports labs. But over in the U.K., '92 Olympic gold
medal sprinter Linford Christie (and bizarre Atlanta Olympics
disqualifier) is the latest athlete to be ``exposed.''

Linford, now largely retired from competition, tested positive
(initial test) for Nandrolone - the same steroid that nailed Vezina -
after he asked to have his name put back on the testing list because
he wanted to run for his local club.

Canada's Donovan Bailey, who came out in staunch support of Linford,
has called for more expert technology in the whole drug testing
industry - and it has become an industry - after a slew of British
athletes tested positive recently.

The taint of scandal is not as easily reversed as a mistaken lab
result.