ANSWER: There seems to be no reason to think otherwise.

The homerun contest prior to this year's baseball All Star game brought to light some things that are being far too common in sports today.

While the contest was going on the TV announcers openly stated that the ball was juiced up. Let's think about that one:

The 1969 baseball season marked the beginning of a lowered pitcher's mound. A great many baseball men say this has contributed more than anything else to the barrage of homeruns.

Then they started building bandbox ballparks to encourage more homeruns, and they brought in fences on some of the old ones -- all to produce more homeruns.

While this is going on -- and though baseball has never been a sport for mastodons -- the players are lifting weights, and some of them are as juiced up as the ball. The results: 160 pounders are swacking the ball out of the park.

So with all this, the contestants in the homerun contest are privileged to a juiced up ball.

What is this, TV wrestling? Is artificiality what we want? Sensationalism over substance.

A basketball player seven feet tall stands under the basket unguarded. At this point his head is three feet from the rim. When he raises his arm they are little more than a foot from the goal. With a hand on the ball twice as big as the average man, he makes a timid little jump and squashes the ball in for two points.

Another seven footer, or one almost that tall, gets a running start with the ball. When he gets to the basket he towers over it like an eagle hovering to land, and smashes the ball down. The crowd goes wild!!

Are these great athletic moves, or have many of the players simply outgrown the net? Whatever the case, the fans seem to love it. Sensationalism over substance.

Just a very few short years ago there were very few PGA golfers capable of hitting a three hundred yard drive. Now it is routinely done. Players stand up there with longer and improved quality shafts, and a head on the club larger than cantaloupe. They drive the ball sometimes three hundred forty plus.

Is there any experienced golfer today that doesn't think -- doesn't know -- that improved equipment is the primary reason for all these stupendous drives? And is there anyone who doesn't think that unless the USGA steps in to stop the golf ball and club manufacturers we are just a few years away from four hundred, and maybe five hundred yard drives?

Will it improve the quality and essence of the game? Maybe so. Sensationalism over substance.

Michelle Wie is a beautiful and talented sixteen year old golfer. Provided she keeps her health, and continues to improve as a player, she will undoubtedly be an important factor in women's golf -- women's golf, we hope.

But Michelle seems more determined to make some kind of splash on the men's tour, and she gets more attention for it than a match between a young Jack Nicklous and Tiger Woods. Why? Sensationalism over substance. She hasn't made a cut on the men's tour yet, and if and when she does, so what? Don't look for Michelle Wie to ever be one of the favorites at the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open, or the PGA.

Soccer is the world's number one team sport. It doesn't seem to be effected by any artificial condition, or men growing larger than their field of play. Individual sports like tennis, boxing, bowling, and others, seem no better or worse than they ever were, and whether athletes in those sports are better now than yesterday is one of those unanswerable questions that can never be proven. Sensationalism in those games has been brought about by unruly characters like Jimmy Conners, John McEnroe, and the hot dog of them all, Muhammad Ali.

Of the team sports in this country, football seems to be the least effected by any artificialness. True, the players are huge now, but it is huge men playing other huge men who can't possibly outgrow the field. Passer or receivers seem to have no advantage. Punters are not kicking any further than they ever did, nor are field goals any longer. The football is obviously not juiced, because we are not seeing any eighty or ninety yard three pointers. The steroid problem is unknown, but at least in football it's steroid gorillas pounding other steroid gorillas, and not taking the advantage of some short fence, or a basketball goal fingertip high.

When sensationalism becomes routine, it is no longer sensational. But that seems to be the story for today.