Year of the Pitcher. Really?

This Major League Baseball Season is being called "The Year of the Pitcher."

At the all-star break, the Toronto Blue Jays' Jose Bautista was leading the majors with 24 home runs, marking the first time since 1995 that not a single player had 25 homers at that point in the season. In fact, this could be the third straight season that not a single player reaches the 50-homer mark, and for the second straight year there were no home runs hit at the All-Star Game.

"You kind of scratch your head and you wonder what's changed," Atlanta Braves veteran pitcher Tim Hudson told reporters covering the All-Star Game. "Are pitchers better or are the hitters worse? Now, a 91, 92 [mph] fastball is bottom of the barrel. Guys just have better stuff nowadays."

Really?

You don't think it might have something to do with the hitters no longer being juiced to the eyeballs with steroids, do you?

This season also highlights how the "steroid era" turned the MLB record book -and the Hall of Fame -into a joke.

Think about it. It looks pretty clear now that the Hall of Fame voters won't induct a player linked to steroids, which means the player who holds the single-season home-run record and the all-time home-run record (Barry Bonds), the player who could break the all-time homer record (Alex Rodriguez), the all-time hit leader (Pete Rose, for gambling, not steroids) and the pitcher with a record seven Cy Young Awards (Roger Clemens) won't be welcome in Cooperstown.

In the long history of MLB, only eight times has a player hit 60 homers or more in a season.

Babe Ruth hit 60 in 1927, a record that stood until Roger Maris hit 61 in 1961. Maris's record stood for 37 years before Mark McGwire hit 70 in 1998, and then Barry Bonds hit 73 in 2001. Between 1998 and 2001, there were six 60-plus home-run seasons accomplished by three players: Bonds, McGwire (twice) and Sammy Sosa (three times).

Rodriguez, who has had three 50-plus homer seasons in his career, entered this year's all-star break with only 14.

Geez, I wonder what all those players might have in common?

I also wonder if MLB commissioner Bud Selig, who earned a reported $18.35 million last year, is wishing he had just kept his head buried in the sand about the whole steroids issue. Last week's homer-less All-Star Game attracted the worst TV ratings in history, dropping 16 per cent from last season. In 1998, when McGwire and Sosa were chasing Maris's record, the all-star Home Run Derby alone attracted a record 9,176,000 viewers.

"There's always going to be a fascination with the home run," ESPN's Chris Berman, who calls the home-run derby, told the New York Times during the all-star break. "Whether it's Mark McGwire bombing the Massachusetts Turnpike at Fenway, Sammy Sosa hitting the heating unit on top of Atlanta, Josh Hamilton at Yankee Stadium -we will remember the longest ones."

And it seems like many baseball fans don't care if those memories are tainted by steroids.

McGwire received a hero's welcome in St. Louis when he returned to the Cardinals this season as a hitting instructor, while sluggers like Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz -who have all been linked to performance-enhancing drugs - were welcomed back with open arms and standing ovations from the hometown fans.

The day after watching the All-Star Game on TV -and listening to the announcers go on about "The Year of the Pitcher" - I called Dick Pound, the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, to get his take on the situation in baseball.

"I have always been a (baseball) fan, but to see the (fan) response to Rodriguez and Ortiz ... people certainly have a very short attention span," said Pound, a Montreal lawyer whose term as WADA president ended at the end of 2007, although he remains on its board.

"You just kind of shake your head," Pound added. "I just don't think the penny has dropped. When your kid looks at these guys and thinks they're the big heroes, your kid thinks that's what you have to do to get to the majors. Down at the base of the pyramid, you have hundreds of thousands of kids with uncontrolled, unregulated use of the stuff without knowing what the hell it's going to do to them."

The same day I spoke with Pound, two minor-leaguers in the Washington Nationals' system and two minor-league free agents were suspended 50 games each after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

Despite the drop in home runs this season, Pound isn't convinced that baseball's drug problem is over.

"They may have made some progress on steroids, but they haven't addressed HGH, EPO and the stimulants," he said. "Are they better than they were before, yeah. Is it really a serious and effective anti-doping program? I don't think so, especially if you're not going to test in the offseason, which is when anyone with an IQ of room temperature would be doing this. You know you're not going to get caught in the off-season, and as long as the stuff has cleared your system by the time you get to spring training, you're home free."

Who does Pound blame for baseball's steroids mess?

"I think pretty well everyone (in MLB) is complicit," he said. "These contracts are negotiated between the league and the players' association. I always thought that the players' association had been kind of hijacked by people who ought to have been looking out for the players, and they're not.

"You would have thought the players would say I don't have to do this stuff to get to the majors, but their representatives are out there arguing against testing and arguing against invasion of privacy, you know, the usual routine ... we could probably get up and chant it ourselves, we've heard it so often.

"Pete Rose is kept out of the Hall of Fame because they weren't sure that his results were real, because he was betting," Pound added. "Your results ain't real if you're on this stuff."

"The Year of the Pitcher"?

How about "The Year Without Steroids"?

Sports editor Stu Cowan comments on some of the recent events in the wild world of sports on his blog at montrealgazette. com/stuonsports

scowan@thegazette.canwest.com