Excuse Me For Asking

But plenty of people wonder: Here's a guy who went nine years without ever hitting more than 40 home runs. In the last four seasons he's hit 66, 63, 50 and 64. Here's a guy who was once a skinny, 165-pound, jet-footed Texas Ranger. Now he's a bulky, 230-pound Mr. Olympus.

"This was because of my tooth," he had said earlier in the interview. "When I first came to Texas [in 1989], I had a bad wisdom tooth. The doctor discovered this, and he fixed it. After that, I start to eat much better."

What'd he eat, Fort Worth?

Sosa also explained that the extra muscle and added girth came from feverish weightlifting, not a feverish pharmacist.

"I have a gym in my house [in the Dominican Republic]," he said. "I work out every day, seven days a week. Sometimes at two or three in the morning."

He said the media's suspicions have hurt him. "They think everybody is guilty," he said. "They judge me, but they don't know me."

That's about when I offered up my brilliant public relations maneuver of having himself tested. Soon we were discussing my relationship with my mother.

Maybe Sosa feels he would undermine his union's bargaining power if he had himself tested. But when I asked him if that's why he didn't want to do it, he again mentioned, rather crisply, "You're not my father."

No, but if I were, I'd tell him to get tested. And I'd say it to Barry Bonds and anybody else who says he cares about the game. If they've got nothing to hide, why wait?

True, it would take some large cojones. Of course, if these players are on steroids, they lost those a long time ago.