GIVE MCGWIRE AN ASTERISK

It is no longer the best man who wins, it's the best-enhanced man

Mark McGwire should get the asterisk.

McGwire, one of the two baseball players closing in on Roger Maris's record
of 61 home runs in a season, uses androstenedione, a product that is
converted to testosterone by the liver. The extra testosterone aids in
muscle growth and recovery.

It may be a naturally occurring steroid, but in its six decades of
availability in synthetic form it has never been scientifically tested for
its effects. Andro's makers and marketers claim it is nothing like anabolic
steroids, which are a direct form of testosterone.

But concern is widespread that andro provides unnatural advantages and may
act enough like an anabolic steroid to cause long-term damage. Anabolic
steroids can injure the liver and heart, cause cancer, and spark
aggression. Andro is banned by the National Football League, the National
Collegiate Athletic Association, the Olympics, and the men's tennis tour.

The 1996 Olympic gold medalist in the shot put, Randy Barnes, has been
banned for life for using androstenedione. Lineman Paul Wiggins of the
Pittsburgh Steelers was suspended for four weeks for testing positive for
andro.

In classified documents recently discovered about the East German athletic
program, andro was one of the substances that East German officials
developed to thwart the Olympic Committee's war on testosterone. In the
1988 Games, such substances were reportedly used without detection. East
Germany finished second in total medals behind the Soviet Union.

One East German swimmer said the replacement drugs provided the feeling of
a ``volcanic eruption.'' Andro was far from the worst substance but was
still part of a 20-year, 10,000-athlete hormone-doping program that
included East German Olympic prospects as young as 10. Today, many former
athletes, some of whom never knew about the testosterone cocktails served
by their coaches, complain today of a wide range of effects, from
uncontrollable acne, deeper voices, and infertility in women to breasts in
men and cancer and liver dysfunction.

Now the volcanic eruption is taking place in America's most sacred sport.
Curiously, most of the nation cheers. McGwire hides behind the fact that it
is a legal ``food supplement,'' a legality born of a Congress and a Food
and Drug Administration that err on the side of profit rather than caution.

His team, the St. Louis Cardinals, and Major League Baseball both use
ignorance as a shield, desperate to do anything to avoid tainting McGwire's
home runs. The Cardinals have said, ``Due to current research that lacks
any documentary evidence of any adverse side effects, the Cardinals'
medical staff cannot object to Mark's choice.''

A handful of seasoned sports columnists have actually looked at the dubious
usage of andro and have called for its immediate ban from baseball locker
rooms. The GNC nutritional chain has banned andro, though it is flying off
the shelves in muscle-headed stores elsewhere in the nation. Almost
everyone says children should not take the substance.

But many sports columnists defend McGwire with many novel theories. They
say andro does not taint his record because he hit 49 home runs in 1987 in
his first full season. They say andro does not taint him because he is
otherwise an overachiever and workaholic. They say andro does not taint him
because it cannot help the hand and eye coordination needed to hit the ball.

Those who would repeat this mantra conveniently forget that the vast
majority of East German athletes, and Randy Barnes, Ben Johnson, swimmer
Michelle Smith, and other athletes who have illegally used
performance-enhancing drugs, were assuredly overachievers, workaholics, and
were powerful and well coordinated in their natural state.

The most common theme is that McGwire was no weakling before andro;
therefore andro is of minimal concern. But no professional or
Olympic-caliber athlete is a wimp. If andro added a mere single home run to
McGwire's total, that 1/62d or 1/63d improvement is no different in spirit
from Ben Johnson or East German swimmers shaving hundredths of seconds off
their Olympic times, fractions that can separate medalists from athletes
who did not even qualify for the Olympics.

We can castigate the East Germans for their sins. We abhor athletes who
abuse drugs that cannot help them on the field, such as alcohol or
marijuana. Yet it seems that McGwire's roulette with andro and the blissful
adoration around him is another example of how America, in its own way,
stresses winning at all costs rather than consider the cost of winning.
Americans just can't seem to win naturally these days, whether it be
McGwire or American road runners who participate in races where they can
earn more money with lower finishes than better trained and more determined
foreign runners.

McGwire will get an asterisk in the lore of baseball, because sooner or
later, the sport will take its head out of the sand and ban the substance,
thus causing all retrospectives to note his use of it. We can only hope
that there is no long-term cost to McGwire himself. We do know this: In
raising his testosterone to reach Maris's record, McGwire has lowered the
values of his sport. No longer is it the best man who wins. It is the
best-enhanced man.

1997 - 1998 Mercury Center.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan