How much do we believe Canseco?

The one good thing about Canseco’s timing is that he’s not writing about the game today, but about a past when the game was silent on the subject of steroids and growth hormone. Until last year, corking your bat was a more serious offense against baseball’s rules than doing steroids. Even today, there is no testing for amphetamines, and for good reason. Ballplayers have been using them for at least 40 years, and a lot of guys would curl up in a corner and cry if they couldn’t pop a pre-game greenie or two.

The truth is that baseball is a game with a long and rich history of cheating. Don Sutton was one of the greatest scuff-ball artists in the history of the game, and it put him in the Hall of Fame. Gaylord Perry admitted he threw the spitter, and threw it frequently, and it didn’t keep him out of the Hall. The ethos of the game has always been it ain’t cheating if you don’t get caught.

When amphetamines came along, ballplayers gobbled them up because they liked the jolt they got from them, especially after a night on the town that turned into morning. When players found that lifting weights helped them perform better, they did that, and when they discovered that there were drugs you could take to get even more results from lifting weights, they did that, too.

Despite what people say, none of it hurt the game. McGwire’s chase of Maris, with Sammy Sosa chasing the same record, helped boost the game’s popularity to new highs. Barry Bonds has been anointed a baseball god, and even with his grand jury testimony admitting he took something but didn’t know what it was, he’s still a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

And with a halfway believable drug policy now in effect, the revelations of the past aren’t hurting the game today. There’s never been more buzz in New York and Boston about an approaching season, and I’ve yet to hear about a team whose season ticket sales plummeted after the BALCO grand jury testimony was leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle.

I don’t want to say baseball has never been healthier, but I will say it’s seldom been in better shape. The game’s redheaded stepchild has been adopted by Washington and is putting down roots. The Yankees actually reached the limits of their enormous financial resources and were unable to even put in a bid for Carlos Beltran.

There’s reason to hope for Mets fans. The Marlins are looking at a new stadium and a team that can contend. Arizona is rebuilding, the Dodgers have showed signs of life, the Cardinals have assembled one of the great offensive teams of this or any era.

If people were cheating two years ago, the new drug policy allows us to believe they aren’t cheating — at least not as outrageously — today.

As for the giants who Canseco says were all playing with muscles on loan from modern chemistry, that’s all in the past. Whatever fallout there is won’t be seen until the Hall of Fame voting is done.

For McGwire, that’s two years from now. Tune in then for an update.

MORE FROM BASEBALL'S STEROID CRISIS

For some Dominican players, steroids worth risk

For some Dominican players, steroids worth risk Feds fight for key evidence against Bonds   Slideshow: Key players in steroid scandal   Slideshow: Steroid scandal, in cartoons   Add Baseball's steroid crisis headlines to your news reader: