DRUG TESTING IS BASEBALL'S BIGGEST JOKE

THIS is what the Mets' horrid season has come down to: jokes. Not only
jokes about the team's miserable play, but also jokes about baseball's
version of the marijuana monologues. Like the one about the Mets scout,
while looking for talent, leaving no stoner unturned. And you know, no one
can ever say the Mets aren't hungry to win, because they've always got the
munchies.

The Mets don't spread the word, they spread the herb.

Even Manager Bobby Valentine could not help but poke a little fun at a
bizarre day - and that's saying something considering the Mets' checkered
off-the-field history - that began with allegations of marijuana use among
Mets players. Valentine was speaking about the 1960's, when pot smoking was
more common, and how baseball players used marijuana after games, but not
before them, because smoking marijuana before playing would impair their
skills.

He went on to make his point by imitating what a drugged-up baseball player
would look like taking a swing, and it resembled a scene from one of those
bad Cheech and Chong movies.

You can't make this stuff up.

. When Newsday reported yesterday that as many as seven Mets players may
have used marijuana this season, it did more than provide fodder for
late-night comedians. It garnered this gut reaction: We're surprised?

Major League Baseball's drug-testing program is about as stern as a kiss on
the cheek. Of course there are Mets players - and probably more players,
all around baseball - smoking dope. That's because any potential marijuana
user in the majors knows he won't get caught because there is no testing.

If there is one thing you learn in covering sports, it is that players will
be players. Some will push the envelope in every conceivable manner,
especially when it comes to money, sex and drugs, the trifecta of
temptation for an athlete. In other words, players do what many of us might
if we were young and handsome and wealthy.

Some of these players are not men. They are children in the bodies of
adults, children who need constant monitoring and supervision. It is a
harsh thing to say, but in some cases it is absolutely true.

Any sport and any team that fails to realize this is doing so at its own
peril. In professional football, as soon as the N.F.L. realized that a
significant number of players were using the dangerous stimulant ephedra -
even though many of the users knew that the drug was linked to hundreds of
deaths - it barred players from using it.

Baseball, on the other hand, does not test major leaguers for any illicit
drugs unless a player has a previous history of using them. That is a
policy that is just thoroughly nonsensical - and dangerous.

And that is what makes this story important. It is not that a number of
Mets players may be smoking marijuana. It is that Major League Baseball
does not know what drugs its players are taking or how many of them may be
using them at all because only minor leaguers are tested. So when a
situation like this comes up, a cloud covers not just the Mets, but the
entire sport.

Testing is not a perfect solution. Tests can be beaten. But many times
cheaters are caught. When Mets General Manager Steve Phillips says he
believes that drug use is not rampant at any level of his organization, he
may be right about the Mets' minor league system; players are tested at
least three times a year.

But when it comes to the Mets' major league players, his guarantee rings
hollow. How does Phillips know? Of the 40 men on his roster, maybe no
players are using drugs, maybe 2 are, maybe 20 are, but the Mets cannot say
definitely because baseball doesn't test them.

. Yesterday afternoon, the team delivered the expected counterattack and
the organization dwelled on the Newsday article's large number of anonymous
sources. So what? Grant Roberts, who was pictured smoking marijuana in a
photograph that accompanied the story, said in a hazy statement yesterday
that a woman he knew had provided the photo to the newspaper and that she
had attempted to extort him. Again, not a big issue.

These are distractions the Mets are using to take away from the real issue,
which is that people are laughing at them now, and to some degree at all of
baseball. A testing program could have ended this whole situation before it
started.

Oh, and did you hear the one about. . . .