Let’s talk a little bit about baseball players on drugs. I know we’ve talked about this a time or two before, and it probably doesn’t deserve all that much attention, but because Jason Giambi’s admissions about a year ago just became public a few days ago, everyone is talking about it, but no one is saying quite what I think needs to be said.

Performance enhancing drugs they call ‘em. I’d have thought that meant Viagra, but anabolic steroids are the drugs to which the term has been applied. It’s a generic term for a wide array of compounds, all of which are legal to possess and use, some with a prescription and some without. Many of the ones athletes use are not available over the counter, and in most athletic organizations, both amateur and professional, there are varying rules about which ones can and can’t be used. Use the wrong ones and you’re said to be cheating.

What steroids do, on the positive side, is improve the body’s ability to develop muscle. Athletes can lift weights and get stronger, but they can lift weights and take steroids and get even stronger and get there faster. In many athletic endeavors, it’s easy to understand how the use of these drugs would create an advantage. For example, a shot putter on ‘roids is likely to throw that iron ball farther than the guy who’s clean. But baseball!? If Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi are juiced, they probably can hit the ball farther. They can hit longer home runs and the fans like that, but they don’t count any more on the scorecard than an infield single. Sure, they’ll hit more home runs because balls that would have been outs with their natural strength might get over the fence, but I don’t really care. It’s none of my business if some guys want to take dope to become muscle bound brutes who can hit a ball a little farther, then die young.

Here’s the real test of how important this is. When the content of Giambi’s admissions was made public last week, the picture splashed on the front pages was him sitting in a car with his brother Jeremy who admits to doing the same drugs as Jason. If these drugs enhance performance so much, why is Jeremy riding minor league buses while Jason plays in New York City. Plenty of mediocre players have tried to muscle up on ‘roids, but it didn’t help. They still couldn’t hit Randy Johnson’s fastball.

What we have is a manufactured crisis. We’ve even got a US Senator who wants a law to require more drug tests for ball players. The real crisis is a bunch of beer drinking fans and sportswriters who are morally outraged that the ballplayers they like to watch would take some substance they think improves their performance. These same outraged spectators don’t raise any stink about going to concerts by musicians who do substances which they think enhance their performance. Maybe I shouldn’t mention that, lest John McCain introduce legislation to require mandatory drug tests for rock stars. Now that would change the world a lot more than a few more home runs by Barry Bonds.

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Okay. This isn’t even remotely related to news, it’s just one of my Andy Rooney rants about something that irritates me. Don’t get me wrong. I love my computers. I use them everyday for one reason or another, but they’re just tools I use to get some work done. They’re just slightly more sophisticated hammers and saws and pliers. What irritates me is that the people who maintain these tools for us tend to think the tools are the work, and the actual work which we do with those tools is just some irritation they have to tolerate to do the real work of processing the data. I suppose that conflict is inevitable. I can maintain my own hammers and saws and pliers, but I need some help with my computers.

Every piece of hardware and software you use has a help line. Have you noticed that it never is? What you get on the help line, after you’ve navigated voice mail hell, is a person who thinks that if you had to call the help line in the first place, you’re obviously a complete moron, and this person is not hesitant about projecting that opinion. Well, my help line frequently is my loving spouse who I’ll admit has a much better head for this electronic stuff than I have. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t give me that help line attitude sometimes, however. Just the other day, I asked her to help me figure out how to do something. She grabbed the mouse and said, "First you click on this icon, then you drop down here and select this menu. Then you select this option and you’ll have these choices, and . . ." and I said, "How am I supposed to know that?" She said, "Well everybody knows that but you."