Big-is-better living through chemistry

Once upon a time in the land of Usa there lived an athlete of astounding ability. His name was Buff Toxin and he went from a skinny, angry, poor kid to a person of strength and wealth overnight. Well, almost overnight.

He was first noticed in his teens. He could hit a baseball pretty good for a skinny, angry, poor kid, but no one took his prospects seriously because of his puniness.

Then one day the wealthy but desperate owner of a losing baseball team, the El Lay Devils, offered Buff a chance for a tryout. But first he had to have a physical exam by the team’s physician, Dr. Strangepill, who was known for his experimentation with performance-enhancing drugs, none of which until then had enhanced anyone’s performance at anything.

But rumor was circulating that the good doctor, a weird sort whom dogs bit and children avoided, had come up with something special. During his physical, Buff was inoculated with a serum that the doctor, for reasons of his own, called MegaBoost.

A miracle occurred. Within weeks, the kid who had been a puny wimp was transformed into a 6-foot-6, 210-pound Greek god, glowing with power. The club owner immediately put him in centerfield and Buff rewarded him with feats of athleticism that had everyone talking and, more importantly, buying tickets to see him play.

In his very first game, Buff hit a home run so far that it killed an old lady in the town of Clover City, six miles away, where most old ladies lived. That, of course, brought him instant notice and an expression of sympathy for the old lady, whose family was sent a nice bouquet of artificial flowers by the team owner’s secretary herself.

But what really attracted attention was when the ace hitter of an opposing team blasted one into centerfield and Buff leaped a good 20 feet into the air to snag it. The crowd went ape. Not only could Buff hit, but he could leap like a demented kangaroo! Buff trotted back to the dugout to a roar that shook the stadium. Everyone was happy, except Baseball Commissioner Dire Suspeck, who felt that something was wrong.

Suspeck did some investigating and discovered not only the amazing transformation of Buff from wimp to hero, but a similar transformation of others:

A basketball player for the El Lay Lookers leaped to lay in a slam dunk and ended up actually flying around the arena like a peacock on amphetamines; a quarterback for the Hoakland Ranglers threw a pass so hard it caught fire on the way to the receiver; and a runner trying out for the Olympics not only ran the mile in 2.4 minutes but broke records for the 100-, 200- and 400-meter sprints along the way.

They all insisted it was because of their natural athletic abilities, and no one really cared whether it was. They were pleasing the crowds, making money for the club owners and becoming incredibly wealthy themselves.

But Commissioner Suspeck couldn’t shake the belief that what they were doing wasn’t natural and continued investigating.

He discovered that all of the athletes were patients of the twisted Dr. Strangepill and that they were all taking what he said were bio-organic, vitamin-enriched, high-energy inoculations called MegaBoost II.

Suspeck ordered a urine test for Buff Toxin, whose stream proved so powerful that it smashed the specimen container, punched a hole in the wall and destroyed a home for the working poor across the street. Subsequent clinical analysis determined that MegaBoost II was so effective that it increased the physical abilities of its users to unbelievable levels. Soon, college and high school athletes had access to it, cheerleaders on limited doses were flipping and leaping like otters, and ancient lawn-bowlers were blasting furrows in the grass.

MegaBoost II was used by dozens of Olympic athletes, all of whom visited Dr. Strangepill on the sly, and records fell like rain in a monsoon. The winners went on to endorsement contracts that made them wealthier than diamond kings, while loudly proclaiming that they were the greatest because of talent, not drugs, although they weren’t the greatest pre-drug. So highly paid were they to perform their feats of speed and strength that the Olympic motto was expanded to “swifter, higher, stronger, richer”!

That was the final straw to grumpy journalists who were jealous because no drug had been invented that would enhance their performance. They demanded that MegaBoost II be pulled off the market to maintain the purity of sport.

But the team owners and the athletes themselves argued that being richer and better than everyone else was the Usan way, and that the new drug was therefore patriotic. They pointed out that old men took drugs for, well, male enhancement, women for sexual freedom without fear of pregnancy, and weightlifters for transformation into movie heroes and political officeholders, so why not athletes?

Eventually, just about everyone was taking drugs for one thing or another, except journalists, who still had to rely on martinis for endurance if not performance. Everyone in the country became better at sports, sex, war and politics.

The only thing they didn’t have was a chemical to make them smarter, but when you’re big and rich and popular, who needs brains?

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.