Got 'Roids? Please...

So, A-Rod confessed to being young and stupid.

Poor guy.

He still doesn't have a clue that he is young and stupid. That was mean. Sorry. No, really, I am sorry.

And, despite Frank Deford's urging to the contrary on Morning Edition, the Yankee camp is once again the buzzing hive of conjecture in the galaxy of conjecture that is spring training. Will they become distracted? What does Sir Jeter think? How about Joe Torre? What would HE do? And on and on...

But, here is a shocker. I did steroids, too.

Yup. Li'l ol' me. I, too, was young and astronomically stupid. And while I am far from young, now, I am still able to manage flashes of blinding idiocy that most forty-year-olds can only dream of.

Yes, well, actually, no...sorry, I did NOT take steroids. Nope. Even though it would make a far better blog to say I had, those ripped biceps and stallionesque quads of my youth were as natural and pure (and as boring) as Kathy Lee.

Those of you who knew me twenty years ago may have worried from time to time about my obsession with rowing. If you didn't, you obviously didn't really love me because I was a sick, sick young man and I spent far too much time on little rowing machines practicing for a race in which you never see the finish line until its over.

But, in all those years, my crew was always two seconds slower. High-school: two seconds slower than Belmont Hill. College: two seconds slower than Georgetown.

Two measly seconds.

Of course, in an eight-oared shell, two seconds is quite a hefty margin but whenever I talk crew, the room tends to empty.

I wouldn't have cared if I got a strange craving for cud or began to whinny like a lippizaner mare, if someone had offered me something to make me stronger, to give me and the rest of the crew a little extra, I would have leapt at the chance. The guy wearing the "Got Steroids" shirt, that would have been me if I had only thought of it. Give me two seconds on the other guys and I would have taken that needle in and pushed the plunger. No problem. I would have done it.

So, how many of those boys of summer would do it, too? Did it, too. In a way, I can't figure out why someone wouldn't do it.