LT PUTS A WEEPY FACE ON SPORTS' GROWING DRUG PROBLEM

We can all remember him-bigger than life in a New York Giants uniform,
scary gold toothed grin, muscles bulging out of everything including
his head, a piranha-like instinct for getting to the quarterback in
time to feast-the greatest linebacker of all time. To this day, the
image of Lawrence Taylor's face still haunts many ex-NFL QBs, as they
will all attest while reaching for some body part permanently maimed
from a hit delivered, in all likelihood, by LT. In his new book,
Lawrence Taylor, the most feared defensive player of all time, makes
it known publicly that he was addicted to crack for much of his
professional career. Not that this information comes as much of a
surprise-most of us recall LT's struggles after he retired-but the
news that he was on crack during his playing days comes as the newest
wrinkle in his life's drama.

In the book, LT reminisces about games in which he couldn't focus
because all he could think about was crack. He tells of sending
hookers to the opposing team's quarterbacks the night before big
games, and of his own personal addiction to prostitution.

If his ominous presence on the field was undeniable, his career stats
are downright ridiculous: He had 132.5 career sacks, including one
year when he had 20.5. And to think that all that time quarterbacks
were worrying about LT, while he was worried about his next crack hit.
It's kind of hard to believe he could do it. He was inducted into the
NFL Hall of Fame in 1999-the first year he was eligible.
Mind-boggling, really, that the best linebacker in history was doing
it without really caring. He wouldn't have done crack if he had truly
cared, of that I am sure. That's not the moral, though. The moral is
that, despite common beliefs, many people get away with being wasted
all the time.

Ask half of the NBA what they would do without pot. Listen to Rush
Limbaugh stutter through his radio show now that he no longer has the
aid of painkillers. Watch Barry Bonds crush baseballs, and wonder if
he and his THG/andro buddies would ever have broken any records if
they weren't hyper alert and super-strong from their latest cycle.
Read David Wells' book, and learn that he threw a no hitter in what he
describes as a half-drunk condition-or, even better-read Dock Ellis'
book to find out how he threw a no-hitter on acid. Listen to the
testimony of several MLBers about the rampant use of amphetamines
among ballplayers. Talk to all the Olympic-class runners who were
recently implicated in the THG scandal and ask them if it was worth
it. Ask Marion Barry how he ever performed his mayoral duties on
crack. Talk to Len Bias about...oh wait, he's dead-because like
everyone else in this live-above-the-law world, he thought it'd be all
good.

Or Darryl Strawberry. He's still alive, at least, but all he gets is a
constant reminder of how bad he messed his life up.

A documentary on JFK said that he was injected with an
amphetamine-like substance nearly every day of his presidency, but
they said that about Hitler, too. More than 10 percent of America's
kids are on Ritalin, which has the same pharmacological makeup of
amphetamines. Half of this state is full of people so wasted on anti
depressants, they wouldn't get mad if you hit them. The point is that
naive Utahns need to realize that they are not living in a world of
sobriety-most of us are screwed up all of the time (not me, of course).

Yeah, a lot of people can get away with it, but most of the time it
catches up with them. That's what we saw in the Sunday night televised
interview with LT-a man broken from drugs. He shattered NFL records in
a condition that would make most of us puke, and then threw it all
away. No, there is no moral to this column-just that there are people
out there getting away with it all the time. Some people get away with
it, some don't.