LOOK, IT'S A speeding Hummer with a professional athlete behind the wheel. It's June, so it's probably a baseball player. Good thing he's driving because he's too drunk to walk . . .

Oops. He just clipped a guard rail on the inside lane, passing a 16-wheeler. Now, he's swung back into the right lane and he's got that upholstered tank up to about 90. And here comes an SUV merging from an on-ramp. Oh, no . . . You don't want to look . . .

Fade to black.

In the next scene, ESPN is covering a live press conference. The GM and the manager are seated at a

table in front of the team's proud logo. They are talking about the powerful contribution poor Lefty made to major league baseball, the franchise and the community as a helluva player, family man and role model. Unfortunately, it will also be said, Lefty occasionally battled the demons and temptations inherent to men of his fame and accomplishment.

Fade to commercial.

Alcohol has been the favorite pastime of the National Pastime going back to when everybody was humming "Slide, Kelly Slide."

A horrific crash involving or caused by a prominent athlete gets our attention for a few days. Remember the Pelle Lindbergh tragedy. Drunken driving and pro athletes go together like orange jumpsuits and those roadside shrines that now dot the shoulder of America's highways.

The Steroid Era, however, where testing rules and penalties are bartered as it unfolds, is a stark disconnect when measured against the carnage of drunken driving.

Juicers run the risk of death, of course. Everybody knows that. We cringed at Ken Caminiti and grotesque, dying, former football monster Lyle Alzado.

We urge commissioners Goodell, Selig, Stern and Bettman to throw the book at the Juicers. Fine 'em, suspend 'em and test 'em like lab rats.

Without doubt there are thousands of Juicers out there. They are the core of a new sports culture. And there is a Himalayan mountain of evidence that the chemicals that give athletes armor plating over steel hawser muscles fail to make them bulletproof. If you watched Lenny Dykstra's pathetic nod to Charles Foster Kane on HBO's "Real Sports" last night, you got a clinic of residual juicing effects wrapped into one paranoid, delusional and very lost tycoon. The only thing missing was a final "F------ Rosebud, bro . . . " The last of scores of e-mails I got from the Dude during the past year responded to my concerns that his Players Club magazine had folded with a scatalogical rant, his words, typed in vari-sized fonts and a rainbow of colors, ended like this:

"The Players Club has never been healthier, you DUMB M-----------." The e-mail was signed, "Respectfully, Lenny K. Dykstra" over a list of titles now as empty as the $18.5 million mansion he is about to lose.

So, yeah, the anabolic steroids and human growth hormones - retiring players union chief Don Fehr battled successfully to keep HGH out of the testing program - are potent stuff. But until HGH is fair game for MLB's chemists, every aging player who has a career year, every former MVP suddenly performing at the bottom of the charts, will be fair game for a media reinventing itself with pointing fingers.

Meanwhile, alcohol-related accidents cause a death every half-hour and an injury every 2 minutes. Alcohol-related crashes claim an average of 17,000 victims a year. You've probably read that criminal justice is a popular major for college football players. I can see why. Such a pervasive culture of thuggery has developed around Joe Paterno's "Grand Experiment" at Penn State, I wondered if the State College drunk tank has blocking sleds.

Listen, I'm not going all preachy on you. I was bounced from Bucknell University 55 years ago for an alcohol-related incident. No whiny appeals in those days, just a bus ticket handed to me the next morning by the Dean of Men.

Former Eagles wideout Donté Stallworth killed a pedestrian in Miami on March 14 while driving drunk. Boy, the prosecutor really stuck it to him - 30 whole days in jail for taking a life due to his criminal negligence. Oh, he'll have some additional inconvenience - 2 years of house arrest, 8 more on probation and 1,000 hours community service. Bottom line, Donté ducked a 15-year stretch. The NFL immediately suspended him indefinitely.

So, on one hand a guy who commited vehicular manslaughter gets a relative wrist slap. On the other, Manny Ramirez tested positive in a random spring-training test and was suspended 50 games. He also will forfeit $7.7 million of his $25 million salary.

Phillies setup reliever J.C. Romero was clipped for 50 games and $2 million for taking a legal OTC supplement he bought at a GNC mall outlet.

Nobody knows how many drinks Cardinals manager Tony La Russa had when he was arrested for DUI in Florida during 2007 spring training. But the YouTube video is a fun watch. Fifty hours community service, a fine, DUI school . . . Oh, well.

Driving drunk did not turn out quite as well for La Russa reliever Josh Hancock later that spring. His blood alcohol was double the limit when he drove his SUV into the back of a tow truck and died instantly. Popular Angels rookie pitcher Nick Adenhart was a sober passenger in an auto driven by a friend and his companion April 9. Andrew Gallo, who police say was drunk and driving on a suspended license, T-boned the trio, killing them instantly. Gallo will go away for a long time.

But steroids remain the big substance-abuse story.

Try to remember, however, that the toll caused by alcohol-related auto accidents blows away the yearly KIA figures suffered in our ongoing two-front wars. But nobody has founded MAAJ - Mothers Against Anabolic Juicing. Not yet. *

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