Durabolin

For all I knew, it could have been baby lotion," baseball player Jeremy Giambi told the federal grand jury last year.

Or toothpaste!

Or hollandaise sauce!

Jeremy, little brother of admitted drug doper Jason Giambi, the former Oakland Athletic-turned-New York Yankee, was talking about the substances given him by BALCO trainer Greg Anderson that Anderson had called the cream" and the clear," and described as undetectable alternatives to steroids."

Help us, Lord, Jeremy Giambi knew he wasn't getting something to soften his knuckles.

Jeremy and big (now shrinking) bro Jason were testifying before a grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) steroid case, and that testimony has been leaked to the press.

In brief, the grand jury was building its almost-ready-for-trial case against the California lab that was marketing a new and deceptive performance-enhancing substance called THG to select athletes.

THG, which has no approved medical use, is a steroid designed specifically to avoid sports testers' scrutiny.

It is related, scientists say, to trenbolone, a synthetic hormone used to improve muscle quality in beef cattle.

Mooo!

The shrinking Jason

You could almost hear Jason Giambi bellow like a steer when he blasted his 43 home runs and 137 RBI in 2000 and won the American League MVP Award.

He flexed his bulging pecs and preened even more when he signed that seven-year, $120 million contract with the Yankees in 2001.

Then came this darned BALCO scandal and heightened concerns over wanton doping by baseball players, and Jason started deflating like a sat-upon whoopee cushion.

Yes," Jason told the grand jury when asked if Anderson provided him with injectable testosterone.

Yes," he said when asked if he knew that it was a steroid.

In fact, both Giambis were juiced before they met Anderson, and in the preliminary blood test Anderson gave them, both tested positive for Deca Durabolin, one of the old standbys for body-building geeks and track-and-field cheaters.

But then, with Anderson's help, they got into THG, plain old testosterone, human growth hormone (from a Las Vegas gym) and even a female hormone to enhance the other stuff.

The sauces didn't work as well with Jeremy -- he is sort of the failed minor-league dope-brother the way Ozzie Canseco was with big- gunned Jose -- but Jason reveled in his newfound power.

Jason denied ever using steroids whenever anyone asked.

I've worked my butt off," he said.

When he looked like a sickly shadow of his former air-hosed self last season, he claimed he had lost four pounds and had simply cleaned out my diet."

(A note here to myself and all inquiring journalists: Why do we even ask?)

But then he and his brother suddenly fessed up to the grand jury.

They shot it here, injected it there, rubbed it on their skin, dripped it under their tongues.

And you thought the late, big-muscled MVP Ken Caminiti was a drug- taking freak with no moral qualms?

What was the reason for the Giambis' sudden familiarity with the truth?

It was caused by a thing called immunity from prosecution, and the fact that lying to a grand jury can put a fellow so deep in the perjuror's wing of the local Club Fed that even his wormy-mouthed agent can't talk him free.

But there's another story here.

Links to Barry Bonds

It's the fact that the web is tightening around perhaps the greatest baseball player of all time, home-run king Barry Bonds.

Anderson, the dope peddler, is Bond's longtime trainer, guru and traveling sidekick.

Bonds has denied using performance-enhancing drugs -- all together, yawn -- but Anderson's sole purpose in life seems to be in providing them.

Look, we will shrug off all doping tales and forget everything negative that ever happened in the tainted world of big-time sport.

I know this. You know this.

We have shown our myopia again and again.

Do you even remember big-time doper Kelli White, for instance, last year's disgraced 100- and 200-meter world sprint champ?

Nah.

But I believe that if Bonds goes down, we really might have to put some mental asterisks alongside some of sport's most cherished records.

I believe we will have to confront cheating in a way we haven't for some time -- maybe since Ben Johnson broke the world 100-meter dash record and almost turned his eyeballs yellow from steroid- induced liver failure in the process.

Major League Baseball management leaders and union leaders are pathetic in their concern about drugs.

The union should be embarrassed to exist.

Bud Selig should grow an ostrich head.

Only a year ago, Rob Manfred, the vice president of labor relations for baseball, snapped at Olympic officials who were critical of baseball's tissue-thin drug policy to mind their own business."

Bonds testified in front of the aforementioned grand jury, too.

What if his testimony runs headlong into the Giambis'?

Perjury has a funky sound to it.

Sort of like a syringe being broken in half.

Or baseball crying.

Rick Telander's new book, Like A Rose: A Celebration of Football, is available at book stores and at www.SportsPublishingLLC.com.

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