Sports

Drug defenses take fans for idiots

I Know, I know. It’s now tough to be a sports fan, and almost impossible to be a patron unless you suspend common sense. The only antidote is to abandon practicality and just take your medicine — those that warn of depression and sexual dysfunction cures that might last too long (over four hours) — the way hams are cured.

So try this: Anytime you go near a ballpark or arena, a sports radio show, a televised sports event and even the sports pages, open your mouth, wide, to form a large “O.”

With me, so far?

Now, stick your tongue way out and lean it to either side of your lower lip, to form a “Q.”

That’s the ticket! Now you look as if someone hit you over the head with a sack of PSLs; now you look like a moron, an all-in, no-questions-asked (or thought) sports fan! Qs of the world, unite!

This week, after a federal trial that lasted nearly as long as an NBA playoff series, “a jury of his peers” found Roger Clemens not guilty of perjury. And that’s fine. So what if the government spent enough to buy a Yankees’ partial ticket plan. Hey, the NYC-owned OTB on 38th Street has been closed for two years yet its lights still brightly shine!

So in our new world as Qs (assume the facial position), we now know that Clemens, who relied on his health to sustain $15 million per year salaries well after other pitchers have to eat potato salad with their other arm, was unable to find a credible, licensed physician to treat his aches and pains.

So Clemens had his trainer — his push-ups and massage guy — inject him, as well as his wife, with a legal elixir of some disputed sort.

“Hey,” Clemens, pants down, lying on his stomach, might have told Brian McNamee, “when you’re done here, Mrs. C. has been a bit achy, lately. Shoot her up, too.”

Dum-de-dum-dum-dum. “Hey, Brian, did you ever think of going to medical school?”

“Yeah, Rog, Club Med School!”

“Good one, dude!”

Tiger Woods, wealthiest golfer since John D. Rockefeller, and his all-star rep-team apparently were unable to find a good, licensed physician anywhere in the U.S. to rehab his leg.

So, on several occasions, they imported one, from Canada, to his home in Florida, Dr. Anthony Galea, who had no license to practice in the U.S.

Galea — who has since pleaded guilty to smuggling illegal substances, including HGH, across the border — had treated other world-class athletes here — more who just couldn’t find a reputable physician anywhere, from New York to Los Angeles, Bangor to Maine.

Suspicious? Not at all. We’re Q’s, remember?

Now to Lance Armstrong. In a big-dough overseas sport that, for the past 35 years, has been predicated on staying one kilometer ahead of blood- and urine-testers, Armstrong won the Tour de France a record seven times. Sacre bleu!

In a perverse way, he might have won fairly and squarely, given that his closest 50 opponents logically were, as my father used to say, “on something.”

Now the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency is not taking no for an answer from Armstrong. Those boys are out to show that despite his denials, they know that he knows that they know that he knows.

Still, a large, bold-faced asterisk attached to world-class cycling shouldn’t be attached beside the results, but over them.

So go get him — if you can.

Meanwhile, as a taxpayer-friendly, cost-savings measure — especially in this heat — how ’bout at least dimming those lights at the former OTB parlor on 38th Street?

Plain and simple: Announcers refuse to talk plainly and simply

Whatever happened to baseball broadcasters who speak plain, conversational English? When did trite become the new black?

Mets announcer Gary Cohen tells us that a base hit “will plate two runs,” speaks as fans as “the hometown faithful,” tells of teams “suffering a host of injuries” and of players who “keep in good stead.” Geez.

Yankees play-by-play man Michael Kay this week told us the Braves’ Freddie Freeman is “in his sophomore campaign.” Yeesh.

Imagine fans speaking to each other that way — without psychiatric supervision, that is.

* For only sad, shameless reasons, FOX is eager for you to know that Charlie Sheen, star of a new FX show, will visit Joe Buck and Tim McCarver — take one for the team, fellas! — during tomorrow’s Yankees-Mets. Cocaine freaks might want to get to Citi Field early to see if Sheen throws out the first eight-ball.

* Words from inside are on the wind that come September, ESPN Radio-NY, ratings-reactive since its move to FM, will add more Stephen A. Smith/Ryan Ruocco, with Kay’s role either diminished or worse.

* For those snoring at home, the Knicks won the 1970 NBA championship on May 8. And while everyone was awake, too.

* Tuesday on SNY, the Mercedes-Benz Super Slo-Mo Replay of the Game — tape of a Johan Santana pitch — was completely hidden behind a Mercedes-Benz graphic. But the view didn’t count as much as the money.

* Welcome to the Obligatory Swipe At Mike Francesa paragraph. Reader Randy Weinberg wants me to tell him that Kevin Durant is 6-foot-9, not 7-foot, as he repeatedly has expertly claimed. You tell him, Randy. I don’t wanna get on his bad side. He’s a powerful man.

* MSG’s Mike Crispino has been hired by Golf Channel as a part-time host and shot-caller.

Dept. of Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The NFL selected Adam “Pacman” Jones to address NFL rookies on social “do’s and don’ts” — but only because Charlie Manson had a prior commitment. Odd, although most NFL and NBA rookies attended American colleges — and on full scholarships — many apparently are unaware they need a valid driver’s license to drive a car.

* Stay tuned again tomorrow night for another suspense-filled episode of “Frank Francisco, Arson Squad”!

* When it comes to stats, ESPN does to TV screens what birds do to windshields. This week we learned that LeBron James has scored 30 or more 13 times during these playoffs, “The most since Kobe Bryant in the 2010 playoffs.” Florida reader Fred Rosen: “In other words, it didn’t happen last year.”