Ron Kantowski would feel better if players just owned up to using steroids

Monday, Dec. 17, 2007 | 7:09 a.m.

So Roger Clemens cheats.

So does Bill Belichick.

And Floyd Landis.

And Marion Jones.

And that French figure skating judge.

And three-quarters of NASCAR's crew chiefs.

I've seen guys score goals in the Stanley Cup playoffs with sticks more curvaceous than Pam Anderson. Those are illegal. Even in Marty McSorley's hands.

In October, I actually saw the Cubs' Mark DeRosa step on second base while turning a double play during the National League Division Series. The next inning, the Diamondbacks' Augie Ojeda made the pivot in the vicinity of Wickenberg. He couldn't have touched second base with a 10-foot pole. But Aramis Ramirez was just as out.

Maybe Bobby Thomson knew what pitch Ralph Branca was going to throw before he hit the shot heard 'round the world. Maybe he just guessed right. I don't know. I wasn't sitting in the center field scoreboard at the Polo Grounds, next to the spy flashing signs to the Giants' dugout.

As long as there have been sports, there has been cheating in sports. As ol' Casey Stengel used to say, you could look it up.

Maybe taking steroids, or human growth hormone, or anything else administered by a needle that is jammed into one's rear end when nobody's paying attention during batting practice, is the worst form of cheating in sports. Put it this way: If I ever have the misfortune of running into the back of a Lexus registered to a guy who plays baseball for a living, I hope it's the one who forgets to touch second base, rather than the one whose head is roughly the size of Rhode Island.

But when Bob Costas or Peter Gammons or John Kruk - well, maybe not John Kruk - or one of the other self-appointed protectors of The Game gets on his Cracker Jack box and says how big biceps are destroying the integrity of its hallowed record book, I want to scream. Loudly. Like a line drive off Tony Gwynn's bat. Like Ozzy Osbourne singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" at Wrigley Field.

How can anyone hold that baseball statistics are created ... well, if not equal, then at least sacred, when these are the facts:

The baseball purists are pulling hamstrings in trying to make sense of the Mitchell Report, which has nothing to do with the back of the old Giant outfielder's bubble gum card, but everything to do with how to clean up the game so we will still have something to talk about with our grandfathers at Thanksgiving.

If Just Say No won't work, I'd start by moving the fences back, for a change, and by making Clemens pitch from second base.

But if that's not practical, I'd talk him and Barry Bonds into saying they had their fingers crossed behind their backs when they issued those denials. If Bonds would just man up and say he was three times the ballplayer that Mark McGwire was and that Sammy Sosa couldn't carry his "Jock Jams" CD - and that he wasn't going to sit around and hit 40 home runs while they were hitting 70 by jamming a needle into their rear ends - I could deal with it a little better.

And if Chico Esquela or any of those other light-hitting utility infielders named in the Mitchell Report would just say that baseball has been Barry, Barry good to them, and that IBM is not hiring .228 lifetime hitters who chew tobacco, so they jammed a needle into their rear ends, I could deal with that, too.

What I can't deal with is Clemens saying he can still throw serious smoke at age 45 because he works out harder than anybody else.

If that's the case, the Cubs should just sign Richard Simmons and let him hit cleanup.