Who's the dope?

There must be simple explanation for my positive test

August 9, 2006

Athletes continue to test positive for illegal drugs, but, as we know, it's always a horrible mistake. Tour de France winner Floyd Landis has, for example, already provided five different reasons to account for his positive test: dehydration, cortisone shots, drinking beer with Jack Daniel's chasers, thyroid medication and his natural unnatural metabolism. Now Frank Deford asks you to consider his own situation. And please, don't be dubious.

Perhaps you have heard the rumors that when I was tested after writing last week's column, performance-enhancing drugs were somehow found in my system.

I am completely mystified how this could be. I have never knowingly taken steroids in my life, because I would never defile my typing fingers. If I am going to do columns for SI.com, I would never stoop to write them dirty for this wonderful institution.

I'm sure there must be a simple explanation for the positive test. It could be that the suntan lotion a strange woman rubbed on me at the beach contained a steroid. I'm also very suspicious of some maple syrup that was put on my pancakes last week, served by a very sinister waitress.

It's also true that after I wrote my column I celebrated by enjoying a marijuana smoke. In moderation, of course, you understand, but you can't ever be too careful. Isn't it possible that, unbeknownst to me, some rotten dealer snuck steroids into my weed?

Certainly, charges that my editor here at SI.com suggested that I take steroids to improve my column are utterly baseless. Yes, of course, he has given me amphetamines in the past to get me up for a big column, but he has always drawn the line at steroids.

I am especially offended at those accusations that my whole profession is dirty, that it simply isn't possible to live up to the demanding standards of bloviating in print without resorting to steroids. Yes, I've heard the whispers: All you old columnists have to juice up to keep up with young bloggers. No, no, a thousand times, no.

If you ask me, it's the fault of the laboratory that surely must have botched the tests. As you know, this is always the situation with athletes. And now with columnists. Laboratories have never once gotten it right. They always have false positives. Or false negatives. Whatever.

Or are those jealous French out to get me?

Or this is just a case of unscrupulous reporters trying to sell newspapers.

Or it's this whole cynical society, the little people envious of the fame and fortune that we columnists enjoy.

Thank God my longtime devoted readers have not been taken in by these erroneous test results, which surely can be explained if everybody will just keep an open mind, because this is America and even though my typing forearms are now five times normal size, we should not jump to conclusions.

In closing, I understand that it will soon be leaked that I was found to have six different kinds of blood in my system. OK, there was this syringe in my bathroom, but I am completely baffled that anyone would jump to these spurious conclusions. I have never knowingly blood-doped in my life.

Thank you, America, for your trust in me.