Pubdate: Friday, August 6, 1999 Source: Toronto Star (Canada) Copyright: 1999, The Toronto Star Contact: http://www.thestar.com/ Author: Rosie DiManno THE POST-MCGWIRE CHEATERS All those drug cheats won't have Mark McGwire to kick around any more. Though I wouldn't recommend trying it. Andro or no, McGwire is built like a brick-you-know-what and those forearms can swing a fist just as powerfully as they can a bat. The St. Louis Cardinals slugger, the 70-home run man, announced this week that he is no longer using androstenedione, the over-the-counter product that tainted (in some people's minds; not mine) McGwire's extraordinary long-ball triumphs last season. In fact, McGwire has been andro-free for the past four months, which doesn't appear to have slackened his prowess at the plate. Big Red cracked career No. 500 and 501 last night against San Diego. ``I thought long and hard about it and I don't like the way it was portrayed, like I was the endorser of the product, which I wasn't,'' McGwire told reporters. ``I don't like how it's portrayed, but young kids take it because of me. I don't like that.'' This will no doubt cheer the anti-McGwire faction, a group I equate with the nicoNazi contingent, such is their zeal in degrading the slugger's achievement, as if andro - a legal drug in major league baseball - had helped him make contact with the ball. It was, after all, the number of home runs that McGwire hit in the '98 campaign that made his a record accomplishment, not the distance of those parabolas. Intelligence and instinct at the plate are not factors affected by andro. However, the McGwire rockets did, inadvertently, provide a handy crutch for other athletes who were caught with their hands in the steroid jar. Ben Johnson, for one, had yet another reason to complain about being unfairly crucified for behaviour which was both legal and commonplace in other sports. The most recent of those to wield the McGwire-shield of self-defence was Steve Vezina, whose positive drug test cost Canada a team gold for roller hockey at the Pan Am Games. ``Mark McGwire is the best hitter in the National League but he was proud to say he was taking andro and he was a hero,'' Vezina whinged last week. ``I take a little bit to help me get ready for ice hockey and it seems it would be less bad if I robbed a bank.'' Oh, poop. It wasn't just ``a little bit.'' It was damn near Richard Pryor freebasing strength; so over-the-top that medical authorities were staggered by the trace evidence still in Vezina's urine. And McGwire was hardly ``proud'' of his andro use. This is like comparing apples and oranges. Or hash brownies and speedballs. Frankly, I've become increasingly suspicious about the credibility quotient in drug testing. This appears an inexact, or befuddled, science, nowhere near as irrefutable as DNA testing. Perhaps the ingenuity of the druggies too rapidly outpaces the testing capability of the sports labs. But over in the U.K., '92 Olympic gold medal sprinter Linford Christie (and bizarre Atlanta Olympics disqualifier) is the latest athlete to be ``exposed.'' Linford, now largely retired from competition, tested positive (initial test) for Nandrolone - the same steroid that nailed Vezina - after he asked to have his name put back on the testing list because he wanted to run for his local club. Canada's Donovan Bailey, who came out in staunch support of Linford, has called for more expert technology in the whole drug testing industry - and it has become an industry - after a slew of British athletes tested positive recently. The taint of scandal is not as easily reversed as a mistaken lab result. - --- MAP posted-by: manemez j lovitto