Reilly, a columnist for Sports Illustrated, didn't want to wait for Major League Baseball so he went ahead and gave Sosa the address of LabCorp, a clinic about 30 minutes from Wrigley Field and urging Sammy to go take the test and help lift a dark cloud off the game.

Give me a break! Reilly has to know that it will take a lot more than one clean steroid test to lift those black clouds from the baseball skies. The biggest and darkest cloud is the work stoppage cloud, but that's another story for another day.

Rick Reilly came very close to winning the Jim Gray award! Like Gray, Reilly was trying to be "The Man," and regardless of whether or not Sammy is clean, Sosa just wasn't dancing to the same tune. Intelligent fans will not be won over by one clean test, even if it is one from the greatest homerun hitters we've seen over the past five years.

Sosa has averaged just over 55 dingers per year since the '98 season. He didn't hit 40 homeruns in one year until the '96 season, but he has hit at least 50 in each of the past four full seasons. I can definitely understand the thought of steroid use, but please don't stop with Sammy, include all of the pumped up homerun-hitters.

I'm not even sure if baseball fans really even care about steroid use. I say this cautiously, but intelligent fans must remember that everything centers around the almighty dollar. If there is rampant use of steroids in the Majors, does baseball really want to expose it?

NO, NO, NO! There is simply too much money involved. Baseball purists like the 2-1 games, but the majority of fans prefer the high-scoring affairs, the games decided by plenty of long balls.

Can you imagine positive tests coming back on Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Jason Giambi, and others? This would create a public relations nightmare. Perception is so, so big in sports. Mark McGwire was using a legal substance and look at the negative backlash he received from his admitted use of Andro.

I'm not really sure if baseball fans care about steroid use, but the truth of the matter is that we probably will never know just how rampant it is in baseball or professional sports as a whole.

I competed in track and field in college and on the international level in '91 as a member of the U.S. Junior Track and Field team. Steroid use is more rampant in track and field than anywhere else, so don't think baseball is at fault alone.

It's funny, though, people that have participated in track know this and even though you may not hear about someone being caught, it doesn't mean they're not juicing. It just means they have not tested positive. There have been many advancements in modern medicine, and not all of them have been good. There are a ton of masking drugs used to cover up steroids, abnormal human growth hormone, and other banned substances.

Baseball will clean up the game if indeed it needs to be cleaned up, but only to a certain extent. If and when steroid testing becomes a part of baseball, expect Sosa and his comrades to pass the test with flying colors, but pause and think for a couple of minutes and then ask yourself, did they really pass? A bigger question may be who really cares?

Reilly wants us to believe he cares, but he only cares about trying to grab the spotlight, a light that is currently shining on Sosa and the sluggers.

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