Mad World
Gone Gamblin'
By Mark Madden

Kenny Rogers got caught with a foreign substance on his pitching hand. It was a PR disaster. Not as bad as the time the Gatlin boys came calling, then took turns at Becky (and there was three of them), but pretty bad nonetheless.

The Detroit Tigers pitcher unsuccessfully tried to lie his way through the media maelstrom, but somehow the World Series continued anyway. Darn.

Baseball has certainly changed from the days when Gaylord Perry admitted, while still an active player, to throwing doctored baseballs. Perry was not suspended, and was ultimately elected to the Hall of Fame.

Rogers, though, was gleefully crucified on talk radio, television and by newspaper columnists. The incident will doubtless leave a stain on his career, not just his hand.

Good. He's a jerk. Somebody should drop a TV camera on his foot.

If Rogers wants a scapegoat for his plight, he should blame Barry Bonds.

Until Bonds started raiding the white man's treasure trove of sacred records, nobody cared about cheating in baseball. But with every cracker even remotely associated with the national pastime scrambling to devalue Barry's accomplishments, a side affect has been outrage, feigned or otherwise, toward all chicanery in baseball.

If you don't care that Rogers had goo on his hand, it's that much harder to justify persecuting Bonds for allegedly having had goo in his system.

But if you take the semi-fascist stance that there are no degrees of dishonesty, only dishonesty, teeing off on Rogers seems to support your anti-Bonds stance. Sen. Joe McCarthy had a nice run with this philosophy before drinking himself to death.

So far, this column has been nonsensical and illogical, but no more nonsensical and illogical than the average football fan's perception of steroid use in the NFL.

Success along both sides of the line in football is based on size and strength. Those commodities can be enhanced via use of steroids and human growth hormone.

Here's my hypodermic...I mean, hypothetical scenario concerning the real steroid policy in the NFL.

Go ahead and use. Just don't make fools of us. If your testosterone rises to a level that would put Hulk Hogan in a coma, you get suspended. Keep it reasonable. And have we mentioned that there is no reliable test for HGH?

Anyone who has that kind of latitude yet still gets pinched must be an idiot. No offense, Mr. Merriman.

The NFL's lax mentality toward steroids is facilitated by the notion that fans don't think of football players as human beings. They're seen as helmeted automatons, faceless, largely hard to tell apart during games. If somebody's aorta explodes in retirement, so what? He's long since been replaced.

The media covering the NFL helps the cause, too. When Rafael Palmeiro got popped for steroids, it was front-page news. Peter Gammons and his ilk wet their pants in outrage. The Merriman bust, meanwhile, got minimal notice and will soon be forgotten.

True, Palmeiro's shame was exacerbated because he had pointedly denied using steroids.

But no one in football has allowed himself to be asked that question on Capitol Hill. Smart.

Instead of making Rogers wash his hands, maybe the umpires should have made him provide a urine sample. Rogers threw far harder in the playoffs than he did during the regular season. Forty-one-year-old pitchers don't gain velocity overnight.

I've long thought Mark McGwire actually wanted writers to find androstenedione in his locker so they wouldn't draw far worse conclusions about the source of his power.

Maybe Rogers had something sticky on his left hand for reasons that had nothing to do with making the baseball break.

Mark Madden hosts a sports talk show 3-7 pm weekdays on ESPN Radio 1250.