Unlike football, baseball's big men keep taking hits, By: Marc Katz

July 11, 2006

Baseball's midsummer classic is tonight, and we're still talking about steroids abuse in the sport.

Football must be getting a big laugh out of that.

Where are the biggest, most over-pumped athletes playing these days? That's right, the NFL.

Since the NFL went into its steroid-testing mode years ago, the league has been hailed as a place where performance-enhancing drug abuse has been curtailed, if not eliminated. The NFL has done it right, Congress said. The NFL has cleaned up drug abuse, the talk shows say.

Uh, what about those news reports that say human growth hormone cannot be detected through a test?

Are you telling me no NFL players are on HGH?

Are you telling me even steroids have been eliminated? Did some of those gargantuan linemen lose weight over the past few months the way some baseball players have?

Yet we're still arguing almost daily if Barry Bonds is or isn't on the juice, or if Mark McGwire or Rafael Palmeiro were or weren't. Or Sammy Sosa.

And the football players keep getting bigger and bigger, and we're supposed to believe it's all because of hard work in the weight room.

Who knows how many other sports have drug abusers? It's baseball season, and baseball is taking the hit for all athletes.

Baseball not only needs better testing procedures.

It needs better public relations.