Last week the Licensed Interstate Exporters, or LIE, announced their trucker of the year award was presented to Tom Speederson. This is the third straight year he has won the award, and he's considered by many to be the best trucker who has ever lived. When his career is finally over, he is expected to own most of the significant trucking records and should be a lock for entry into the Trucker's Hall of Fame.

Speederson's legend has grown through the years. He burst onto the scene when he was 21 years old, and was considered a fine truck driver, quiet, solid and respected, but unable to drive for long periods of time without sleep. All that changed five years ago, when he suddenly doubled his cross-country trips. His eyes became glassy and he was noticeably jittery behind the wheel. He began talking incessantly and showed all the telltale signs of being on some sort of amphetamine.

Trucking records began to fall and soon he broke the previously untouchable record of delivering over 72 loads during the summer. In fact, he shattered the old record and delivered 83 loads. He didn't let up though. He got less and less sleep each year, and his weight dropped significantly.

LIE, while admitting that some truckers use speed, made little, if any, effort to get Mr. Speederson help with his problem or even to acknowledge there was a problem. He was making them a ton of money and so were the other truckers who followed his lead and started to take speed on the job. "It's a union issue," a spokesman for LIE said. "We know some truckers take speed, but testing them would require a new contract."

Speederson and many other truckers may have been a danger to themselves and others with their drug use, but Americans love following the trucking industry, especially when records are being broken on a regular basis. Their lives may indeed be shortened by their use of speed, and a few drivers are already showing signs that speed has messed them up.

Speederson has admitted he took some "vitamins" given to him by a driving instructor and used eye drops that seemed to keep him awake, but swears he was not aware of it if he was taking any actual speed.

Amphetamines or not, Speederson was again given the Trucker of the Year award.

What are you going to do? Trucking is America's pastime.

No wait, um, baseball is America's pastime. OK, wait, go back and read from the beginning, except substitute Barry Bonds' name for Tom Speederson's, Major League Baseball for the trucking industry and steroids for speed. It seems sort of ridiculous, but I bet our nation wouldn't allow speeded-up truckers on the highways. They could endanger other people's lives and their own.

Yet, we allow our athletes to endanger their own lives and to set a bad example for the children who look up to them and want to emulate them.

Apparently, if you're doing something fun that everyone likes to watch and people like to make money off of, then drugs are perfectly OK. If your job is a little less glamourous, then no drugs for you.

It's sort of unfair to single out Barry Bonds simply because he's an arrogant jackass (I would have rather used that word that rhymes with socktucker, but I wanted to keep it clean, so I went with jackass). He talks about his greatness on a regular basis, but seldom talks about how he managed to make his head grow to twice its size just by lifting weights. He talks about the records he's breaking, but doesn't mention much about how he went from a tall lanky kid to a monstrosity of a man in a year's time. He talks about the press being racist, but doesn't mention that he's more than likely a big fat liar.

He's just a fairly unlikable fella. Back when all of this probably started, though, we didn't care so much, because those hulking steroid users were great guys.?We were captivated as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa set out to break the Roger Maris single-season home-run record. They hugged each other when Mark broke that record, just to show how sweet they really were. Wow, two great guys, two great examples of better living through chemistry. A guy with a smile that big couldn't possibly be on drugs.

It's going to get worse before it gets better. Jason Giambi is already sprouting tumors like a lab rat and missed most of this season due to some sort of parasite. Ken Caminitti is dead, though that was just cocaine, and probably had nothing to do with steroid use, right?

Gary Sheffield admitted he used some steroid cream by accident. Jose Canseco can't stop telling people how much he used steroids.

Now that the supposedly sealed Balco testimony has been leaked, it's all coming to the light of day. The owners get rich and live to be 90. The players get rich and die before they can collect social security. The fans watch their game be destroyed.

What would Babe Ruth say if he were alive today??He'd probably get drunk and score a hooker ... just like the old days.