WHEN IT COMES TO STEROIDS, ONE SPORT GETS A PASS.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

George Carlin, the comic, gave us the classic riff on the differences between football and baseball. They included: ``Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness. Baseball has the sacrifice.''

Tom Boswell, the press-box wag, gave us 99 reasons baseball is better than football. No. 64 was: ``When a baseball player gets knocked out of the game, he goes to the showers. When a football player gets knocked out of the game, he goes to get X-rayed.''

And now Capitol Hill, the nation's comedy club, has given us the latest illustration of the baseball-football divide. The occasion was another steroids hearing.

Any question that baseball remains - choose a cliche - the sport woven most deeply into the fabric of American society, the sport viewed most widely as an ethical pillar, the sport that somehow mattersthe most?

Congress' Government Reform Committee took testimony from NFL executives and one former player Wednesday and the scene was nothing like the one at the panel's baseball hearing last month.

Nobody had to fight back tears. Nobody took the Fifth, or whatever it was that Mark McGwire was trying to do. Nobody called anybody a ``disgrace,'' as Curt Schilling referred to Jose Canseco.

Steve Courson, an old Pittsburgh Steelers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive lineman who blames his steroid abuse for a heart condition, was the lone player on the witness list.

The Associated Press reported: ``Courson delivered his statement to dozens of empty chairs. Only one member of the committee was present, because others left for a floor vote.''

ESPN provided live television of some of the football hearing, but there was nowhere near the cable-news attention that accompanied the baseball hearing.

I doubt any major newspapers splashed a photo of Steve Courson across four columns on Page 1 this morning as they did with McGwire, Schilling, Canseco, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro.

A news.google.com search Wednesday afternoon for articles mentioning ``steroids'' and ``football'' or ``NFL'' drew 5,570 examples. ``Steroids'' and ``baseball''? That drew 11,000.

Why would the subject of steroids in the football locker room inspire only about half the interest of steroids in the baseball clubhouse?

One factor, not to be underestimated, is that the NFL effectively stiff-armed the controversy by adopting steroids testing in 1987 - a full decade and a half before Major League Baseball reached an owners-players agreement to test.

The NFL's superior PR work was evident when, on the eve of Wednesday's Congressional hearing, the league announced players now are subject to a maximum of six offseason tests, up from two.

Only the most naive sports fan thinks football has been wiped clean of steroids and other shadowy performance enhancers.

No, the big reason the steroids-football connection elicits a coast-to-coast yawn is that football isn't held to the same standards as baseball.

If the best baseball player in the land turns out to be a juiced-up brute who just overpowers equally skilled opponents, it is viewed as a national outrage and columnists mourn our shattered illusions. We decry the assault on baseball's most revered statistical record as the defiling of the national pastime's history book.

If the best football player around is a walking chemistry lab, well, it's ``what a physical specimen that guy is.'' For that matter, does football even have a revered statistical record?

Baseball fans expect at least the illusion that games are settled by the carefully refined skills of normal-sized human beings.

Football fans accept that games are decided in the trenches in wars of strength between robots.

Baseball fans cherish the delicate balance of offense and defense that has remained relatively constant from decade to decade.

Football fans know that rules and tactics have changed so dramatically through the years that there is no cherished balance to upset.

Or put it this way.

Baseball writes books about playing the right ``way.'' Baseball players operate by unwritten rules.

Football is the sport that gave us ``Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing.'' Football players risk life and limb - theirs and others'.

None of this means we shouldn't care as much about football players abusing drugs as we do about baseball players doing it. Steve Courson was in Washington on Wednesday to deliver that message.

We just don't care as much. I'm not sure if that shows one sport is better than the other. It definitely shows how different they are.

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Photo:

Former NFL player Steve Courson, right, testifies about the NFL's steroid policy during a Congressional hearing Wednesday.

Charles Dharapak/Associated Press