WHEN Mark McGwire breaks Roger Maris' record, I can't imagine what else there will be to say. M&Ms and popcorn:
food for thoughtWe know he's doing it with greater efficiency than Maris hit his 61 in 1961. McGwire has had a lot fewer at bats, fewer games and his home runs have traveled a lot farther.
We know he's a big, burly redhead who's not entirely lovable but who loves kids. That he has been known to shed tears in public, suffers from claustrophobia, has a chronically bad back, had a bout with mononucleosis in high school, struggled in the Big Leagues for a while this decade, is divorced and has his 10-year-old son written into his contract as a Cardinals' batboy. And that he uses androstenedione.
I know this subject was beaten to death after a reporter found the stuff in McGwire's locker. But, hey, look. His swing is as quick now as it was when he was fresh and in spring training.
Is that natural?
I was thinking about this (as well as I could under the circumstances), last night in a doctor's office. I was having about 12 gallons of warm tap water pumped into my right ear by a nurse armed with a large syringe. She was trying to dislodge a baseball-sized ball of wax that's parked inside my ear canal, causing an infection.
(Please, please. Don't send flowers.) I assume this might account for my chronic writing blocks over the past few months, so I'm having it treated.
The wax wouldn't budge, and she wouldn't take my logical suggestion to attack the problem by flushing water through the left ear.
ANYWAY, it occurred to me that I need to clear my ear canal because the pain of the infection has affected my ability to do my job.
And that's pretty important.
Certainly, McGwire was thinking the same thing in taking androstenedione. And that sounds very reasonable to me.
I don't think people ought to take just anything they think will help them do their job better. But androstenedione is a natural substance found in humans, animals and in the pollen from many plants.
In fact, it's produced in the gonads and adrenal glands of all mammals. It increases blood levels of testosterone and speeds up recovery time.
How's that for pharmaceutical talk, huh?
So McGwire is officially clean on the performance-enhancing point. I suppose.
Now don't ask me if that means he's clean the way Bill Clinton was ''legally accurate'' in his testimony about Monica and Paula.
But I do know there'll be no asterisk next to McGwire's record because he used androstenedione to help him set it.
It is legal in this country, allowed by the Major Leagues but banned in the league of highest morals, the NFL. Cool.
SO, now, why can't I find a naturally occurring performance-enhancing substance I can buy over the counter to help me write better and faster?
Something that my editors will consider acceptable. Not ''creatine,'' but maybe ''creatastori.''
Not only would it enlighten me when I have grunts for quotes and a dull game to write about, but it would give me the spring of a mountain goat when I have to climb Aloha Stadium's steep back stairs to the football press booth.
The problem is that even if my newsroom approved of ''creatastori,'' that doesn't mean the rest of the nation would.
Just like the NFL suspended the Steelers' Paul Wiggins for using androstenedione while baseball smiled at McGwire, I might find myself under incredible scrutiny if I won the Pulitzer.
Judges on the journalism panel would check my face for acne and I would have to take a urine test.
I guess I just envy McGwire. But, the fact is, he's at a fitness level at which something like ''creatastori'' would help him produce at a supreme rate.
With my waist size, I think I'll just have to stick to the performance-enhancing substances I'm using now: Frappuccinos, Taco Bell burritos, M&Ms and popcorn.
I call it food for thought.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.