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Makes you feel real sad

Pittsburgh Steelers nose tackle Joel Steed, on his new four-year, $16 million contract:

“If you think about the whole thing, it’s like the whole world is on your shoulders. It’s like a ton of bricks fell on you, even if the bricks are gold.”

Sprewell back for more

Latrell Sprewell’s last lawsuit was so preposterous that a judge laughed him out of court, writes San Francisco Examiner columnist Ray Ratto. The suit is being re-filed without including the Warriors as defendants.

This time, Sprewell wants the NBA (a) to refund $5.4 million of the money it took from him; (b) to cap his fine at the $1 million the Warriors took from him in the few hours they spent actually trying to discipline him themselves; and (c) to admit that it destroyed evidence that would have tended to support Sprewell.

“What this evidence is, we presumably will have to learn in court,” writes Ratto. “Maybe a forensics expert will show that it was actually Rod Strickland who choked Carlesimo from 2,600 miles away. Maybe they will unearth a monstrous police conspiracy, even though the cops were never called, not even in the 20 or so minutes it took for Carlesimo’s face to return to its original shape.

“Maybe they will even haul Jane Alexander, the former director of the National Endowment for the Arts, in to admit that yes, the agency would fund his piece, ‘Coach In Very Blue.”’

Creating natural freaks

Creatine, which targets high school boys in TV ads with scenes of bulked-up guys with letter jackets and cheerleaders, is a bigger seller and less controversial than androstenedione, so the company Experimental and Applied Sciences isn’t trumpeting its “andro” line right now.

“I would venture to say our product that includes androstenedione makes up only a fraction of our sales. I would venture to say it’s less than 5 percent,” EAS marketing director Jim Nagle told the Denver Post’s Mark Kiszla.

Nevertheless, that 5 percent may be dangerous.

“People say androstenedione is natural, so it can’t be bad,” Houston Astros physician Bill Bryan told Kiszla. “That blows my mind. Nicotine is natural. Turpentine is a natural substance. Arsenic is natural.”

Serving up boredom

In baseball, the power is in the bottle. In tennis, it’s in the racquet and some people aren’t happy with it.

“He was serving around 120 miles an hour, and I had no idea where it was going,” Mark Woodforde said Monday after his first-round loss to Goran Ivanisevic in the U.S. Open.

“I can’t believe that the game is going that way and the fans want to see tennis like that. You just sort of walk back and forth. I don’t know whether the wooden racquets would slow him down, but I’d like to maybe try that possibility.”

Says columnist Harvey Araton of the New York Times: “If only tennis had long ago legislated against hormonal experimentation with racquets, the result of which has turned the men’s game into a freak show of blurry fuzz.”

The last word …

“I don’t blame the fans. They wanted to see Mark hit. It’s like paying to see Elvis and getting a garage band instead.”

- John Mabry of the St. Louis Cardinals, who is booed whenever he plays in place of Mark McGwire